


Careless Whispers

by chainocommand



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Dark, As preferred, Bromance, Distopia, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:45:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 25,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainocommand/pseuds/chainocommand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve makes an ill-advised wish he ends up in a distopian reality where he never exists and so superheroes never did either. Rather than Tony Stark/Iron Man, he has ninety-four year old Howard Stark as his help. Steve has to learn a lesson before he is returned to his own reality, one he isn't sure he's ready to learn.<br/>Steve Rogers does 'It's a Wonderful Life!'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And Then There Was One

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings: Mentions of Holocaust and Nazi experiments, torture, and imprisonment.
> 
> Can be read as bromance between Tony and Steve, or pre-slash depending on personal preferences.

Steven Rogers was born prematurely on the fourth of July 1920 to Irish immigrants Sarah and Joseph Rogers during the flu epidemic. Small and sickly, born far too early because of his mother’s illness, the doctors didn’t give the child much hope in surviving. But he made it through his first night, then his second, then three months later they were allowed to take him home.

 

Over the years he grew, but Steve was always smaller and skinnier than the other boys his age, always the first to catch a cold and the last to get over it. Constantly in and out of school because of his illnesses, Steve spent most of his time with his mother being fussed over and tucked up into bed. When his father came home in the evenings, Joseph would read to him, creating wonderlands in the boy’s imagination. Heroes, knights, men of honour and bravery were Steve’s constant childhood companions, his role models, and for the longest time his only friends.

But the Depression hit harder than any of them thought it would, and took Joseph as a casualty. The chemical warfare used during the Great War had weakened his lungs and the bout of influenza had damaged them permanently, so when the pneumonia hit when Steve was eight, Joseph only had a couple of weeks between the first cough and his final resting place. A soldier in the 107th, he was buried with honours, but it wasn’t the twenty-one gun salute Steve remembered, it was his mother. Thin and pale, she kept face even as she was handed the folded flag but Steve heard her crying during the night. Creeping in the room, Steve slid under the covers and curled up against his mother. He couldn’t breathe when she wrapped her arms around him and held him close, but the emotional comfort outweighed the physical discomfort and he stayed there all night.

 

Steve put the next few months down to his mother’s heartache: the fragility, the lack of spark that had made his mother who she was. She was tired because she was back at work. But when things got worse rather than better as they approached the anniversary of his father’s death, Steve started getting worried.

Twelve months to the day, Steve stood to attention watching his mother’s casket be lowered into the grave beside his father’s, the folded flag held in front of his chest like a shield. 

Tuberculosis, they had said. 

Tuberculosis, pneumonia, the causes didn’t matter much when the end was the same. 

He missed her, he missed them both, of course he did, but he couldn’t help but feel they were better off where they were. Together, and whole: he’d spent months watching the two people who should be invincible to him waste away and die. He never wanted to do that again.


	2. Two Little Boys...

The orphanage, he decided, was not so bad. The building itself was a bit depressing, a crowded brownstone that was nothing like the small two bedroom apartment in a tenement building that he had lived in with his parents. He was led in by an old friend of his father’s that had been to his mother’s funeral – Steve didn’t recognise him, but apparently Lt. Maguire had been his father’s best man at his wedding. Joseph was never one to spend time with the boys on his time off – between Steve’s illnesses and his job, there wasn’t a lot of time they got to spend as a family – so Steve couldn’t remember meeting any of the men his father had served with (despite Joseph’s assurances he had sat on all their laps when he had gotten out of the hospital as a baby).

‘I hate to leave you, kid, but the State won’t let me take you,’ said Maguire, on one knee in front of his best friend’s son. 

‘I understand, sir,’ said Steve, holding his single, small suitcase in front of him with both hands.

‘Brave kid, your dad would have been proud,’ said Maguire. He handed Steve a small slip of paper, ‘this is my address, it’s all the details I can give you right now. I ship out the day after tomorrow, but anything you send to this address will get to me eventually.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Steve.

‘Will you be alright?’

‘Yes, sir, I think so,’ said Steve.

‘I’ll stay in touch. You need anything, you let me know,’ said Maguire. ‘Your dad was an important member of the 107th, there’s a lot of people looking out for you.’

But none of them could take him in. Laws and the time being what they were, a single guy wanting to adopt a preteen boy... Apparently serving for years with his father didn’t count as a good enough reason for wanting to take Steve in without nefarious intentions. And being a soldier just made them unreliable apparently – you don’t give a child to someone who might not come back.

Steve tucked the slip of paper into his breast pocket. ‘Thank you, sir, I will.’

Maguire saluted him, which Steve returned, clasped his shoulder, and left him.

 

He was shown to one room that he would share with four other boys, two beds on the side of the room with the door, three on the other. He put his suitcase on the single empty bed, the one closest to the door. That was him done for the day. In the morning he would start at his new school, his old one being too far away from where he lived now. He couldn’t stay that he was going to miss the place – the pupils were mean and the teachers indifferent. This place couldn’t be any worse.

In the following weeks, he found the other kids nice enough. There were bullies, naturally, but there had been bullies at every stage of his life: he saw no reason to start being afraid of them now. 

His mother had always told him to expect the unexpected. His father told him to give people a chance. Which is how he came to find himself stood on his bed with his suitcase clasped to his chest, watching two boys roll around the floor, biting and scratching like alley cats. Not knowing what to do, Steve took a swing with the case. It made a satisfying crunch when it hit the pair and threw them off each other.

Bucky lay on his back, panting. ‘Cheers,’ he gasped. 

Steve hopped off the bed to help the pair up. The other boy, Marcus, snarled and swiped his hand away, storming off. Bucky, however, took the hand offered and stood up gingerly, rubbing his arm. ‘Pack a big punch for a little guy,’ he said.

‘The suitcase has metal corners,’ Steve explained with a apologetic shrug.

‘Is that what that was?’ said Bucky, rolling up his sleeve to reveal a large red mark surrounding a dent on his forearm. 

‘I’m really very sorry about that,’ said Steve.

‘It’s okay, I’ve had worse,’ said Bucky, waving it away. He stuck out his hand. ‘James Buchanan Barnes,’ he said proudly. ‘But everyone calls me Bucky.’

‘Steven Rogers,’ said Steve.

And that is how James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes came into his life. 

He didn’t leave it for a long time. And for that long time, he was all Steve had. They spent their days running through the streets of Brooklyn, getting into trouble and staying out late. Some nights they camped out on rooftops rather than go back to the crowded boys’ dormitory in the orphanage. Steve loved those nights the best, laying back and watching the stars. Usually the stars were obliterated by the smog from the city streets, but up here they were above the steam grates and the factories bellowing out smoke. Steve’s mother would have had kittens if she had known that her sickly son scaled fire escapes and raced across rooftops, but Bucky always encouraged him to push himself rather than let other people set his limitations. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but Bucky was always there when Steve had an asthma attack.


	3. ...Got Up To Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> World War Two has come to America. Bucky and Steve enlist, and Steve embarks on Operation: Rebirth where he meets Dr. Erskine, Howard Stark, and Agent Peggy Carter. The year is 1942.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two and three titles are adapted from a nonsense poem 'Two Dead Boys Got Up to Fight'.

Ten years later, and it was 1942. America had been at war for months now following the events at Pearl Harbour. So much for a ‘European’ war.

After ten years of friendship, Bucky and Steve were both twenty-two and their age remained the only thing they had in common. Steve was about a foot shorter and eighty pounds lighter than Bucky, but they still looked out for each other. Steve could count the alleys and car parks and train stations that he hadn’t gotten beaten up behind faster than he could count the ones he had, but Bucky had an unerring ability to find him wherever he was and kick the guy’s ass, literally putting boot to backside and sending them on their way. He did the same thing to a jackass from the movies before telling Steve he had finally been assigned – to the 107th, shipping out the very next day. 

Bucky had signed up with the first wave and been accepted without question. Steve had gone with him and, despite Bucky’s urges, had volunteered too: that was the first time he failed the exam. Then there was the other four times Steve had gone without him. Bucky had not been impressed when he found out that Steve had been lying on his form, thus risking imprisonment. He had gone into graphic detail about what could happen to a little guy like Steve in prison in an attempt to dissuade him. Then he dragged Steve to a fair to be the plus one on Bucky’s date, intending to spend his last night the way most soldiers did before being shipped out. 

 

Bucky’s date was thrilled to see him.

Steve’s girl was less than impressed.

It was nothing Steve wasn’t used to: Bucky kept trying to set him up on dates, but these broads always wanted another Bucky, not the weedy guy he had been looking out for since they were kids. The one who was usually shorter than the dame was.

The date hadn’t gone well, which was exactly what he thought was going to happen when Bucky had told him he had a dame in mind for him. They had done the usual song and dance: she tried to be polite, he tried to get her interest before the awkwardness of it all killed any hope and they both stopped pretending they were on a date while she tried to catch Bucky’s eye away from her friend. More than once Bucky had ended up going home with both girls since Steve didn’t mind; it didn’t much matter to Steve, the broads never came back with him anyway. Bucky would tell Steve all about it when he had done the Walk of Smug (Bucky didn’t do shame) back into their apartment in the morning, but even attempting to draw it out Steve’s imagination was woefully lacking about how one went about making love to more than one person at a time.

Giving up on the girl, Steve thought about something he might actually have a chance with: one more attempt at getting enlisted. Rather than try to dissuade him, Bucky hugged him goodbye and took the girls dancing.

It was here that he met Dr. Erskine, from Germany via Queens. When the nurse had left to ‘talk to the doctor’, but when the MP had walked in instead, Steve honestly thought his number was up on this one and he was jail bound. He tried not to think about the inmate called Viv that Bucky had told him so much about. But instead of getting read his rights, he was offered the chance of a lifetime. He was given the opportunity to change himself, and maybe the world with it. He had said that he had no right to do anything less than anybody else, and this was his chance to prove it. When he got out of that pod, he would still be the same kid from Brooklyn... just a little bigger. At least he hoped so: honestly, he wasn’t sure what Dr. Erskine’s super soldier serum was going to do to him. Enhance everything that was on the inside, what did that mean? Good became great. So, a skinny kid from Brooklyn became the next breed of soldier?

Or was Colonel Philips right: was he still not going to be enough?

He didn’t feel enough. He was used to being the little guy, but here... Dr. Erskine must have made a mistake, he couldn’t do this. Basic training was like high school all over again, except everyone was bigger and meaner. Steve got through on determination and the occasional good idea, gumption being the only reason Colonel Philips didn’t pick him up by the scruff of the neck and chuck him out on his ass. Gumption and Dr. Erskine’s refusal to let Philips do such a thing. Steve didn’t know which skinny guy Colonel Philips disliked more, himself or Dr. Erskine.

 

Looking back at that time, Steve always saw everything through the rose-coloured spectacles of first love. Her name was Peggy. Agent Peggy Carter. She didn’t see him for a while – she was several inches taller than him – but he gained her attention over the weeks of basic training without meeting to; jumping onto grenades tended to do that.

It was just his luck that the first time a dame showed any interest in him he was too immersed in... stuff to enjoy it. Which is how he found himself sitting in the back of the car next to Peggy, babbling away, accidentally insulting her, and trying not to think about everything Bucky had ever said about girls in backseats.  
He remembered pain. Lots of pain. Needle pricks all over his body. He could feel the serum flowing through his veins leaving a burning trail of agony in its wake, flooding every cell, irrevocably altering his DNA to flush out imperfections. His faulty immune system was bolstered, the arrhythmia, asthma, propensity for chills, fevers and fatigue disappeared. Scarlet Fever, Rheumatic Fever, heart trouble all gone. A family history of diabetes and cancer rendered irrelevant. His blood pressure lowered as his heart increased in size and strength.

Bones lengthened as he grew a foot in a matter of seconds, organs increased in productivity and efficiency, enlarging to fill the space, his skin stretching like rubber to cover it all. His jaw bones grew, preventing him from screaming until the serum passed through his head to his body. He heard someone outside yelling to turn the machine off. He felt the pain recede slightly, enough to scream his denial in return – he could do this. He had to do this. 

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Pain. An explosion. Running through the streets of New York – he tried not to look down: the ground was a lot further away than it had been that morning. His new legs felt strange; he couldn’t get them to work at first and went through a storefront window. He felt awful about scaring them like that.

Soon it was all bright lights, dancing girls and tights. The genius in his life went from a softly-spoken German biologist to a brash, womanising weapons creator.


	4. At the End of All Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve in World War Two: 1942-1945.

The first time Steve had seen Howard, he was too busy trying to figure out how to talk to his date to really pay attention to Howard who was on stage being more of a showman than a scientist, a view Steve quickly rethought after a few days working beside the man. Howard was a lot of things, slightly crazy being one of them, but he wasn’t a hack and Steve had to respect him for the effort he put into his designs.

Liking Howard was a little slower coming, but Steve had to appreciate their relationship when Howard risked his own safety to commandeer a plane and fly them over enemy territory to find Bucky. He was the only one who could, the only pilot outside the chain of command and not terrified of what would happen to his testicles if he disobeyed Col. Philips. He got Peggy back safely while Steve went after the 107th that had been captured in battle, and for that Steve would always be grateful – not that he would tell Peggy who would likely be insulted and thus violent at the insinuation. 

Without Howard, Steve never would have been able to bring Bucky, and the rest of the men, back to the Allied camp, a move that inadvertently took Captain America from dancing monkey to genuine hero.

Howard reminded Steve of Bucky, only slightly more polished and with a lot of money. They got on well, those two, now having someone to share their vast experience with the opposite sex. They both agreed Steve was rather useless in that regard. He didn’t disagree – he didn’t believe half of what they said was possible, and the rest of it made him blush.

Howard didn’t go out on missions with them, but his work back at the base on their weapons and his charismatic demeanour made him a honorary Howler, the Brainy Commando as the ever imaginative Dum Dum Dugan suggested. But as much as Steve loved the weapons he gifted them with (as much as it caused fights between Bucky and Jacques because Bucky’s knives were always that bit bigger), it was the time Steve spent with the man between missions that cemented their friendship as one Steve would carry with him always.

It was the times after the missions that stayed with him more than anything, times when he was tired and sore and just wanted to remember he was more than the government’s weapon. When he woke up in a brand new century, out of time and completely out of his depth, he remembered Howard. On these occasions, Howard was to be found in the cabin (shed) the inventor had built himself on Philips’ orders after he had nearly blown up the lab smoking during an experiment. He had made it open to the Howling Commandoes, so this was the place they went when they didn't want to be soldiers for a while. They didn't share war stories here but tales of home. Tales of faithful lovers waiting their return, children growing – both present and potential – and friends changing. They sat, they smoke, they drank when they could get their hands on the stuff, which was pretty regularly given Howard and Bucky’s partnership. It was here that Bucky had kindly informed the Commandoes that Steve was still a virgin which led to more stories than Steve had ever wanted to hear, and more plots on how to get Peggy locked in a room with him than his conscience would allow. They didn't listen when Steve told them to leave Peggy alone, that she was a nice broad who deserved their respect. Dum Dum said she deserved a whole lot more but it was the hand gesture he made that induced Steve to throw a book at him.

One night, it was only Howard in the cabin. There was a cigarette burning between his fingers, half-forgotten. He had his feet propped up on another chair, a downcast look on his face that was much more sedentary than his usual, almost manic expression as thoughts rushed through his brain.

‘Howard,’ Steve said as he walked in – he didn't knock but only because Col. Philips had forbidden Howard to put a door on the cabin – so the man would know he was there. ‘May I?’

Howard looked up, his reverie broken, and gestured at an empty seat.

‘Where are the others?’ asked Steve as he sat down.

‘Chester let them go into town to blow off some steam,’ Howard said, taking a drag from his cigarette and letting the smoke blow slowly out from between his lips. From where Steve was sat, Howard was framed by the doorway, the cigarette smoke looked like the Milky Way as it blew across the dark rectangle of sky. Steve pulled the small notebook and the pencil and to sketch the inventor. The men were used to it by now that they didn't try to pose or refuse anymore.

‘Howard Stark turned down the opportunity to go carousing?’ Steve teased his friend with a smile.

Howard murmured a sound of agreement. ‘I had a terrible thought just before we left, one a man should not go out on the tiles with in his head. We haven’t talked about it before, but then being that much more intelligent than the rest of you it isn't surprising that I thought of it first.’

Steve smiled at Howard’s unintentional insult and the man’s arrogance. ‘And what was this thought of yours?’

‘We’re not all going to make it out of this alive,’ said Howard, staring at the wall in front of him.

Steve looked up. ‘Howard,’ he reprimanded lightly.

‘It’s true, Steven,’ said Howard. ‘We joke about it, but we see it every day. Every day Col. Philips signs condolences for men that are going home in boxes. Good men. Men like you, Steve. And I have this horrible feeling that it’s going to be you, Stevo. You’re going to be the one we lose. Because you’re the best of us. And the best always die young.’

Steve sat back, feeling dread curl in his stomach to sit low in his belly. He knew Howard hadn’t said it to be malicious. Howard was unequivocally honest, that was his problem. Steve didn’t know what to say but he didn’t have to because Howard wasn’t finished yet.

‘You’re going to do something, volunteer for some mission because you think it’s right when the rest of us know it’s hopeless,’ said Howard his voice low like he wasn’t really talking to Steve anymore. ‘You’ll choose to save someone else instead of yourself. And then it will happen: you won’t come back. The Commandoes will stand to attention at your funeral. The world will say nice things about you, but we won’t.’

Steve snorted, attempting to break the tension, ‘because you don’t really like me?’

‘Because we know you and the world doesn’t. Because the world idolises you, but we’re the ones that love you. We’ll miss you as something more than a hero. Captain America, we’ll miss him. But Steve? Steve is the one we’ll mourn,’ Howard gestured at him with the hand holding the cigarette, flicking them both with ash. ‘Our friend, our brother in arms. Our Steve, he’s the one we’ll lose. The one that blushes when Peggy looks at him. The one that teases Bucky about the time when you were thirteen and did something stupid. The leader of our little band of misfits playing mother hen to us all.’

‘I’m not dead yet,’ said Steve, trying and failing for a note of jovial mocking, instead sounding as tired and serious as Howard.

‘But you will be,’ said Howard. ‘And it won’t be glorious. It won’t be beautiful, or dignified, or any of the shit we tell young men to make them enlist. It will be lonely, and cold, and painful. And when you wake up, you’ll be somewhere you don’t even recognise. I hope you find what you’re looking for there, Stevo, I really hope you do.’

They sat in silence for the rest of the evening, despair weighing on them. When the Howling Commandoes came back seven sheets to the wind and smelling of their dates, Steve and Howard didn’t tell them of the conversation they had had. 

They never told anyone about that talk, but as Steve sat in the pilot seat of a cockpit feeling the cold seep into his bones as ice crept up his legs and over the windshield in front of him, it was all he could think about, about how Howard was right. He was lonely, cold, and in pain, and he’d done it because he’d thought it was the right thing to do.

The last few years had been a blur and now here he was, twenty-five years old, crashing into the North Atlantic, hoping against hope that somehow he was going to get to the Stork Club that Saturday. Have that slow dance, holding Peggy close while Howard, Bucky and the rest of the Commandoes cheered him on from the sidelines as they drank the bar dry.

The war wasn’t over yet, but for him it was.

He didn’t find what he was looking for, he didn’t find Peggy.

Instead, he found Tony.


	5. Acclimatisation and Taking Captain America to a Gay Bar Aren't the Same Thing.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve is woken up after seventy years on the ice and left in the care of Tony. He finds himself increasingly lost in the world around him.

What Steve woke up to, except for a blistering headache, was a dark haired man that wasn’t nearly as familiar as he looked like he should be. Tony Stark was a person unlike anyone he had met before, even Howard. Physically, there was no doubt Tony was a Stark, but there was something... neglected about Tony. Howard had been loved and adored all his life, especially by his parents. Tony... Tony was walking inferiority complex inside a Messiah complex disguised as a playboy with a drink problem. No wonder he made Steve’s head hurt.

So here he was in this place where everyone he knew was dead, computers were the size of books, the sons of his dead friends were grown – apparently with daddy issues – and images of him were all over something called the internet. 

Tony epitomised the twenty-first century for Steve: he was loud, uncontained, uncensored, uninhibited, and – some of the time – drunk off his face. He went a million miles an hour, making Steve feel like a doddering old fool plodding along next to the man fifteen years his senior. 

 

Rather than tell the world that Captain America, superhero and super soldier from World War Two, they – they being Tony Stark and Nick Fury – decided it would be better if Steve trailed Tony until he had a grasp on things. While he was at it, he would begin training with the other Avengers. Eventually, once he had a better understanding of the way this new world worked and he had completed his first successful mission, they would hold the necessary press conference.

Until further notice he was Tony Stark’s ‘bodyguard’. It made sense that Tony Stark would need a bodyguard, but not why Iron Man would. When Steve put forward this point it was waved away: apparently Tony Stark was rich enough to be a superhero with a bodyguard. It also meant there was someone else to make Tony do paperwork when he was running away from Pepper. He spent most of the time Tony was in various non-Avengers meetings sat in the car with Happy listening to the other man yell at the radio and using Tony’s tablet (not a pill) to “surf the ‘Net”.

Before long and much sooner than Fury had hoped, the media made Steve front page news as Tony Stark’s unidentified companion (they feared Stark Industries legal department too much to write ‘boyfriend’ but it wasn’t lost on anyone that that was where they were going). Given how much of Tony’s life ended up in the papers, Pepper was rather impressed that they had managed to keep Steve under wraps for the better part of a month. It was only because the newspapers had noticed that this particular six foot blonde had been by Tony’s side for weeks and kept appearing in all their photos. It didn’t hurt that Steve was very nice and they made a good looking couple.

It was a rumour that would persist throughout their friendship. Tony did nothing to quell the gossip, in fact sometimes Steve thought he went out of his way to create them. Tony was not that much shorter than him, he couldn’t keep using that as a reason why his hand was always about four inches lower than it should be when he put his hand on Steve’s back for photos.

‘You’re taller than everyone else,’ said Tony absently, his attention caught up with the Caddy’s engine.

‘I’m the same height as you,’ said Steve.

‘You’re 1.54 inches taller,’ said Tony.

‘How-‘

‘JARVIS had to take your measures for the new suit,’ said Tony. 

Steve felt a little violated at that. He tugged at his collar.

‘Pepper and Fury just wanted to ask you to maybe be tone it down in future,’ said Steve.

‘Do I make you uncomfortable?’

‘Yes.’

Tony whirled around on his chair, Steve finally having gained his full attention. ‘I do?’

‘You keep... touching me,’ said Steve. ‘It’s not appropriate!’

Tony snorted. ‘Nothing of this age is appropriate to you.’ 

‘Don’t dismiss me, Tony,’ said Steve.

‘Steven,’ Tony said bored, ‘what exactly is it that bothers you?’

Steve signed. ‘I understand that you might be... that way inclined,’ he said stiffly, ‘but you don’t handle it with due care and discretion.’

‘What point is discretion?’ said Tony. ‘They all know.’

Steve’s eyes bulged. ‘They know? Tony, how could you let it happen!’

‘No one cares what I do with it as long as the stock options are high,’ said Tony, turning back to work.

‘But the police,’ said Steve.

‘Why would it both them? It’s not like it’s illegal anymore,’ said Tony, clicking away at his screens.

‘It’s not?’ said Steve.

Tony spun around again, fixing Steve with a wide-eyed look. ‘Steve, what- JARVIS, call Fury.’

‘Calling Colonel Nicholas Fury, sir,’ said JARVIS.

‘Stark?’

‘Fury, what exactly have you told Steve about the twenty-first century?’ said Tony. ‘What came under ‘acclimatisation’ for you?’

‘We told Steve everything he needed to know,’ said Fury.

‘What about normal stuff, Fury?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like gay people, Fury, come on!’ said Tony.

‘Why would that have been an issue?’

‘Because he’s freaking out that we’re going to get arrested for me feeling him up!’ said Tony.

‘I am not freaking out, sir,’ said Steve to the ceiling, as he always did when JARVIS was involved. At least he didn't spin around looking for the source anymore, Tony hadn't been able to keep a straight face at that.

‘Stark, take care of this,’ said Fury. And then he hung up.

‘Right, get your coat, Captain, we’re going out,’ said Tony, ordering JARVIS to save everything he had been working on.

 

They ended up in a gay bar. Steve’s eyes looked like they were going to pop out of his head as a man in assless chaps walked past, his hand down the back of his date’s trousers. He caught himself staring and spun around, staring determinedly down at the bar. 

Tony ordered them a couple of colourful drinks. Steve downed his in one, almost choking on the umbrella. The men around him, including Tony, looked impressed and then interested, nudging closer. 

‘I can’t get drunk,’ said Steve at the look on Tony’s face. ‘My metabolism.’

‘Ah,’ said Tony, nodding. ‘That is a shame.’

‘Is this... I’m... oh lord,’ said Steve. He grabbed Tony’s drink and knocked that back as well.

‘You can’t get drunk,’ said Tony, looking at him.

‘No.’

‘Then why are you drinking my drink,’ said Tony.

‘Because it makes me feel like I used to,’ said Steve.

‘Drunk?’

‘Human.’

Tony filed that one away for later.

‘So, what do you think?’ said Tony, turning them around and leaning against the bar. ‘Great, isn’t it?’

‘It is something else,’ said Steve. ‘I haven’t seen a place like this since France, 1944.’

‘France?’

‘Underground bars,’ said Steve. ‘Nazi-occupied France. There were always underground bars; at that’s time all it could be: underground. But after the occupation it was the only form of resistance we had so we went for it. This place is rather tame in comparison.’

Tame? Tony had taken him to Splash. On Twink Night.

Clearly there was more to Capt. Steven Rogers than had been in his file. Tony also filed this away for future use.

‘You’ll have to explain this to me,’ said Tony, signalling for two more drinks, ‘you, the man who gets nervous when I lay a hand on you in case you get arrested, spent time in underground gay bars in Nazi-occupied France? How does that work?’

‘It works perfectly well,’ said Steve. ‘That was how I grew up. Gay Pride was a long way off, Tony. This is – everything’s public, it’s odd. We had to be underground, there was no other way.’

‘We?’ Tony said with a smile.

Steve looked at him, exasperated. ‘I went to a few. There wasn’t a lot of time off, so when we could leave we’d go anywhere that was available.’

‘And nothing is as resilient as a gay man who needs to get laid,’ said Tony.

‘There are ways of putting it. But we had a sense of propriety still.’

‘Do you want to dance?’ asked a young man who came up. Steve stared, he couldn’t help it – the only thing this young man was wearing was body oil, a small pair of shorts, and black Doc Martens. 

He looked good, there was no doubt about it. But Steve couldn’t help but think he must be dreadfully cold.

Tony and the young man burst out laughing when this was all Steve could manage to mumble.

‘You can warm me up,’ said the guy.

‘Sorry, honey, I don’t think he’s ready,’ said Tony, patting Steve’s hand. ‘He’s new.’

‘What about you?’

‘I am not new,’ said Tony with a bright grin.

It was the same position that Steve had been in many time before. He ended up at the bar, taking a small vindictive pleasure in racking up quite a bill on Tony’s tab, holding Tony’s coat and watching everyone else have fun. By the end of the night, Tony had a three figure tab and Steve had most of Tony’s clothes. 

‘That was fun,’ said Tony.

‘Yes, it was a very enjoyable evening,’ said Steve. ‘Please walk in a straight line, Tony.’

Tony had to disengage his mouth from the young man – Lewis, his name was Lewis – to answer, ‘I am!’

‘No, you’re meandering,’ said Steve. He had given up trying to put Tony’s clothes back on him and now just wanted to get him back into the car and home to bed.

‘Sounds like an excellent plan,’ said Tony brightly. ‘You’ll love my bed, Lewis, plenty of room to roll.’

Lewis laughed and Steve tried to ignore Tony’s lewd pelvic motions. It was surprisingly easy when he had to navigate his way through paparazzi, trying to keep two drunken individuals vaguely upright and moving towards the car. It took a while, but eventually, Steve got them to the car which then presented its own problem.

Tony only had a two seater roadster. 

‘Right,’ said Steve, honestly stumped at this point. He just wanted to go home, have a bath and go to bed.

‘Never fear, my darlings, for I am a inventor!’ cried Tony.

His solution was for Steve to drive the automatic while Lewis sat in Tony’s lap in the passenger seat, trying not to kick Steve every time Tony tickled him. An automatic. Steve was a rider, not a driver, and he kept having issue with what to do with his feet now he wasn’t changing gears. Still, they made it home in the end, though Steve was sure that he had found one of the few things that could leave permanent bruises in Captain America: a horny twink in work boots.

‘Sorry, Steve,’ said Lewis as he and Tony leaned on each other, stumbling into the house.

‘It’s alright, Lewis,’ said Steve. The bruise would be gone by the time he went to bed.

‘Night, Stevo!’

‘Goodnight, Tony,’ said Steve, pushing them into Tony’s room and closing the door.

Stevo.

Oi, he hadn’t heard that since that night in the cabin with Howard. It was surreal at best, heart wrenching at worst.

Feeling more tired than he had in a long time, Steve drew himself a bath, soaking in it as he read an old copy of Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Novels he had found in Tony’s library. All this talk of those days made him nostalgic and Isherwood was still one of Steve’s favourite authors.

 

The bath had gone cold by the time Steve, wrinkly skinned and lonely, stepped out of the tub, wrapping himself in a large, fluffy towel. JARVIS had been good enough to soundproof Tony’s room so he didn’t hear what the inventor was getting up to with that young blonde.

Steve folded himself into bed wishing, not for the first time, that they had just left him alone there in the ice.

 

It was nearly noon when Tony re-emerged, twink-less. He found Steve in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the Sunday paper. Steve was relieved he hadn’t seen him earlier: Tony didn’t seem to sleep until his body gave out on him and forced a shutdown. Or someone wore him out sufficiently. 

‘Morning!’ said Tony merrily, pouring coffee into a large mug and adding obscene amounts of sugar.

‘Afternoon,’ said Steve, looking up.

‘What are you up to today?’ asked Tony.

‘I’m going to the veterans home,’ said Steve.

‘That’s a bit depressing for a Sunday, isn’t it?’ said Tony offhand.

‘One of my old unit lives there,’ said Steve stiffly. ‘Fury gave me a list of the surviving men I served with, I’m going to visit them.’

‘Oh.’ Tony had the good grace to look abashed. ‘Do you need the car? Or Happy?’

‘No, thank you,’ said Steve. ‘I’ve got my bike, I’ll be fine.’

‘Do you want to come with you?’ asked Tony.

‘Pepper left you some forms that need to be signed before you come into the office tomorrow,’ said Steve, sliding forward the small pile of paper in front of him.  
Tony made an unhappy noise in the back of his throat. ‘Can’t I come with you instead?’

‘I don’t think you’ll have much fun, Tony,’ said Steve, standing up and washing up his cup. ‘We’ll be talking about the old days, people you’ve never met, the war. You’ll be bored. Why don’t you stay and work in the shop?’

Tony couldn’t help feeling like a child denied by his parent. Suddenly Cap was a lot older than him, and a lot wiser, and he was leaving Tony behind. He hated that feeling.

‘I’ll see you later then,’ he said, picking up the forms and stomping out of the kitchen. 

 

When Steve came back, drained and sad, Tony was in the living room, covered in oil and fiddling with the Iron Man gauntlet he was wearing.

‘Didn’t Pepper say you had to go that in the workshop since you blew out four panels of glass last time you were angry?’ asked Steve.

‘I’m not angry, I am Zen,’ said Tony, eyes flitting between the gauntlet and the TV screen.

Steve fixed himself a whiskey on the rocks and snagged the remote. ‘I see we had a threesome last night,’ he said, eyeing Tony as he flicked through some vapid ‘news’ report with some footage from the club. Steve hadn’t thought he’d been that annoyed, but he certainly looked exasperated as he chivvied Tony and Lewis to the car.

‘Hmm, I heard that,’ said Tony. ‘Did we enjoy it?’

‘You enjoy it from the looks of it,’ said Steve, gesturing at the fingerprint bruises on his biceps. 

Tony looked down at them. ‘Huh. How was your friend?’

‘Old,’ said Steve, draining his glass in one gulp, ice cubes tinkling gently against the glass. ‘Old and dying. Like everyone else I know.’

He sounded so dejected and so far from his usual military calm that Tony forgot he was still in a grump with him. For now. ‘You okay?’

Steve looked down at the ice melting from the heat of his grip. ‘Why did you come for me?’

‘Huh?’ Tony had clearly misheard. ‘Oh, did you want a pickup? I thought you had your bike.’

‘No, Tony, why did you come for me? When I was frozen? Why didn’t you just leave me there?’ asked Cap.

Tony shrugged. ‘I was following orders. Satellites picked up something weird in the North Atlantic, Coulson got to it ahead of the Russians, we brought you home and de-iced you.’

‘But why?’ persisted Steve.

‘Jesus, Steve!’ said Tony, throwing up his hands, gauntlet and all. ‘I don’t know, because you’re freaking Captain America, the US’s one true hero who disappeared before the end of the war. Finding you answered a lot of questions, it was good PR after the War on Terror. They didn’t mean to, but when we got you back to the lab, we found out it was possible. You weren’t dead just... a Capsicle.’

‘And none of you thought what it would mean to me?’ said Cap. ‘To be reawakened after all this time?’

‘You mean did we think about what it would mean to give a twenty-five year old a second chance to live after he gave everything for this country?’ said Tony softly. ‘Yes, Steve, I thought about it.’

‘You...’

‘It was my decision,’ said Tony. ‘Fury left it up to me. It was my father’s work that made you a super soldier, and it was his goal to find you after the war, but he never did. When you turned up, I just... I had to! You were the only hero I had!’

‘I?’

‘We,’ Tony corrected himself sharply, ‘the only hero we had.’

Steve looked down at his glass. ‘You had every person who ever stepped on a battlefield, Tony. You had a lot of heroes.’

‘None like you,’ said Tony. ‘You were... you were the best of us. You had to come back.’

‘You and Howard,’ said Steve gently, ‘you aren’t so different.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Tony, looking up, his dark eyes burning at the comparison.

‘Your father said I was the best of them, then told me I would die because of it. You tell me you brought me back because of it. Because I’m the best of us. But I’m not.’

‘Then what are you?’

‘I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.’ A kid who after seventy years of sleeping was still so very tired.


	6. Careless Whispers and Careless Wishes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve (finally) ends up in the world where he was never born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't realise how short this chapter was, but didn't want to mess up with closing by adding another bit. So instead, the next chapter will be up very shortly!

Tony had hoped that after a while Steve would shake off this melancholy that had come over him, but as time went on it just got worse. The SHIELD psychiatrist started throwing words around like ‘depression’ and ‘post-traumatic stress disorder’. Steve looked confused until someone explained it was the new term for shell shock, and then stoutly refused medication which would have had no impact on him away given his metabolism.

Over time Steve got a better handle on the tech, learned the lingo, became refamiliarised with his surroundings, but he was still angry and confused. According to Coulson, who Tony felt was a little snappy when the inventor was just trying to help, Steve was grieving for the forties. Tony supposed it made sense. For most people, they lost a loved one, one at a time; Steve had lost everyone he had known and the world he had grown up in along with it. Coulson said it was going to take time.

But Tony had given it time, he’d given it months. They’d saved the world a bunch of times over, Steve was settling in and had been made known to the public – saving New York from a hole in the sky and big armoured slugs and those aliens tended to do that. But he was still sad, and it only got worse as the Christmas season approached.

Tony found him on the patio of Stark Tower one night, looking out over the city. ‘Pepper told me to bring you a coat,’ he said, holding out the thick overcoat, scarf and gloves. Actually, he hadn’t seen Pepper since that morning.

Steve looked over his shoulder, shrugged into the coat, wound the scarf around his neck and tucked it into the coat that he buttoned up. Tony leant against the railing next to him.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Planes,’ said Steve dully, pulling on the gloves.

‘Very funny,’ said Tony sarcastically. ‘What’s wrong with you? You’ve been down in the dumps for months, and then this morning after that phone call – what happened?’

‘Remember the veteran I visited?’ Tony looked blank. ‘The day after you took me to Splash?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Tony.

‘He died in the night. The funeral is on Thursday,’ said Steve, ‘it looks like I’ll be the only one there.’

‘I’ll go with you, we all will,’ said Tony.

‘You didn’t know him.’

‘If you don’t want me to go, I don’t have to,’ said Tony. This is why he wasn’t nice to people.

‘I would like it if you did,’ said Steve, ‘but you don’t have to. You probably have meetings or paperwork to do.’

‘I think Pepper will let me have a reprieve for a good cause.’

 

On Thursday, Steve stood by the graveside of his former corporal with the other Avengers, giving the last of his old unit a good send off. It was a short ceremony with only the superheroes and the priest in attendance – Calver’s wife had died a few months ago, and they had never had children.

‘You okay?’ Tony asked, putting his arm around Steve’s shoulders as the others began making their way to the cars.

‘I should be here,’ said Steve, looking at the gravestone. ‘I should have been here for seventy years. I don’t belong here anymore, Tony.’

‘But you are here, Steve,’ said Tony.

‘I wished you’d never pulled me out of the ice, Tony,’ said Steve. ‘No, I wish I’d never been born, then I never would never have been in that damn war, and never been stuck here.’

Steve turned away sharply.

A woman in a bright red coat laying flowers at a grave two over looked up. Tears made her eyes shimmer as she brushed leaves and dirt off the two names on the tombstone. _Thomas and William._ Her dear sons. ‘You don’t wish to be born, Steven Rogers? So be it,’ she hissed with a grieving mother’s fury.

 

Steve looked around when he felt Tony’s hand leave his shoulder. He looked up but the graveyard was empty. ‘Fellas? Miss Potts? Tony!’

‘They’re not here,’ said a feminine voice. A woman walked up to him wearing a scarlet leotard, cloak and headdress, hardly an intelligent outfit for late December in New York,

‘Where are they?’ he said, surveying her suspiciously.

‘Not here,’ she said, fair too casually.

‘Where is here?’

‘Here is exactly where you wanted to be,’ said Wanda. Steve frowned at her. ‘Steven Rogers, welcome to the world where you were never born at all.’


	7. Uncanny Valley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve ends up in a distopia and sees a familiar face.

It felt like he was stuck in the ice again. Cold was stealing over him, keeping him where he stood.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said hoarsely.

‘Clearly, you do,’ said Wanda.

Steve looked around him. The weather hadn’t changed. It was still freezing cold, the clear skies merely a lull between blizzards, with a frigid wind blowing down from Canada. The grave Steve had watched them dig this morning was decades old, the tombstone weather worn, the name nearly erased by time and the elements.

‘What is this place?’ he asked again.

‘I told you,’ Wanda said impatiently, ‘this is New York, 2012.’

‘This isn’t New York.’

‘This is New York without you,’ said Wanda.

‘What did you do?’ Steve demanded, rounding on her.

‘I gave you what you wanted – you were never born in this world, Steve,’ she said, wrapping her cloak more tightly around her.

Steve stared at her, trying to figure out if she technically counted as a woman and whether he could hit her. She was, he couldn’t, so he stalked away.

‘You’re welcome,’ Wanda muttered. She slogged her way up through the snow to the road, following Steve. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To the city!’ Steve yelled back over his shoulder. ‘To find Tony!’

‘Good luck with that,’ Wanda mumbled, pulling her cloak free when it got caught on a root.

Steve nearly got to the road when an expensive car drew up. Steve saw a familiar figure get out from behind the wheel and open the back passenger door. An old man hobbled out, a cane in one hand, two bunches of roses in the other. The driver tried to help but was shaken off with a wave of the cane and some sharp words that were lost before the wind could take them to Steve’s ears. He watched, Wanda silent by his side, as the old man bent double with age made his way slowly towards a pair of white marble angels that dominated the graveyard landscape. His driver followed a little way behind.

The old man lay the roses at the feet of the two angels – the white and red roses were for the female angel, the purple roses at the feet of the younger, male angel. Steve watched as the old man gently wiped away some stray leaves from the nearby tree with his handkerchief, and kissed the feet of the statutes. When he covered his face with his hand and started to sob his driver tried to take him back to the car but was again repelled with sharp words so instead went to the car, returning with a small folding seat that he set up at the foot of the graves. The old man allowed himself to be sat down, his legs covered with a blanket, but that was all the fussing he would permit.

The driver turned and Steve saw him full on for the first time. ‘Happy?’ He started towards him.

‘Steve, no!’ said Wanda, catching him by the arm. ‘You can’t.’

Steve looked at her. ‘Let go,’ he said coldly.

Wanda didn’t fear much these days, but the look in Captain America’s eyes sent a shiver down even her spine. She loosened her grip and Steve strode away, towards Happy and the towering angels.

‘Happy!’

Happy Hogan turned around, his hand going to the gun on his belt that Steve was sure he didn’t carry normally.

‘Happy, it’s me, Steve,’ said Cap.

Happy kept on glaring at him, not sign of recognition crossing his face. ‘I don’t –‘

‘Stand down, Mr Hogan, I know this man,’ said the old man, standing up and leaning on his cane.

His voice was deeper, gravelly with age and slightly wheezy; it commanded attention rather than charmed it as he had when he was younger.

‘Howard?’ Steve said aghast.

‘Steve.’ Howard hobbled forward and Steve found himself gingerly hugging the old man, convinced he would break him if he squeezed too hard.

‘You don’t look a day older than when you were lost,’ said Howard, stepping back and look at him. His eyes crinkled with the warm smile Steve hadn’t seen in nearly a year.

‘You – do,’ said Steve, taken aback. Howard was alive. He had to be in his nineties now.

Howard let out a wheezy laugh. ‘Not all of us are super soldiers, Steven. Mr Hogan, pack up the things, we’re leaving.’

‘Now, Mr. Stark? You usually stay longer,’ said Happy, draping the blanket over his arm and folding up the chair.

‘Today is not a usual day,’ said Howard, smiling at Steve. ‘Call Ms Potts, tell her we will be home earlier than usual and bringing a guest.’

‘Yes, Mr Stark,’ said Happy. He inclined his head and went back to the car, putting the seat and blanket into the boot before pulling out his phone.

‘Give me your arm, Steven, I’m an old man,’ said Howard, holding out the hand that didn’t have the cane in it.

Steve held out his arm and Howard grasped it firmly. The fingers were bony, the skin wrinkled but tough like parchment.

‘Your friend by the tree may come too,’ said Howard, ‘the one in the red cloak and interesting headwear. I swear, I can’t keep up with fashion these days. Do you know there’s an archer walking around in a Pocahontas outfit? Give me a tailored suit from Armani any day.’

‘Clint? Clint is here?’ said Steve, absently waving Wanda over as he leaned down to hear Howard.

‘Not here,’ said Howard, ‘couldn’t tell you where he is. Then again, what’s the point of a terrorist organisation you can find, eh?’

‘Terrorist?’ Steve repeated aghast.

‘Yes, Mr. Barton did not care for the Directorate’s attempt to conscript him into the army – can’t blame him, they had just blown up his house – so he went on the run,’ said Howard. ‘Met up with a few others, I can’t remember them all but there’s a few assassins and scientists in there, and formed the Avengers.’

‘The Avengers exist here?’ said Steve eagerly, helping Howard into the Mercedes and covering his legs with another blanket.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Howard, stashing away his cane. ‘Oh yes, they exist. Called themselves the Avengers for all those killed or imprisoned by SHIELD.’

‘Sir,’ said Happy, looking around them.

‘Oh, Mr. Hogan, relax, they’re not going to kill me,’ said Howard, waving Happy away. ‘I’m too old to bother with anymore. Now, Steven, is your attractive, and rather underdressed, friend coming with us or are we leaving her in the graveyard like a crimson Reaper?’

Steve was tempted to leave Wanda here but his common sense told him to keep her in sight. Bundling her into the car ahead of him, Steve shut the door behind them and Happy drove them away.

‘Hello, my dear,’ said Howard pleasantly. ‘My, my, would like a coat? You’re nearly naked!’

Wanda looked down at herself but couldn’t see anything wrong with her costume; she still accepted the blanket though. 

 

Steve didn’t recognise the street they were on, or the house they had pulled up to. They had driven to Long Island, but they weren’t in the house by the sea where Tony had taken Steve to spend his first Christmas rather than at SHIELD headquarters like Steve had planned. Steve followed Howard into the house. ‘This isn’t your house.’

Howard hung up his coat, hat and cane by the front door. ‘You never saw my house,’ said Howard, wheezing slightly as he led them slowly into the living room, collapsing into his chair with a relieved sigh.

‘Tony took us there for Christmas, my first Christmas out of the ice,’ said Steve.

Howard gave him a sad smile. ‘That one. I’m sorry, Steven, I sold that one years ago. Too much for one man to be rattling around in.’

‘It was a big place,’ said Steve. ‘Held all of us easily enough. Even Thor fitted the bed.’

‘Thor,’ said Howard. ‘Why does that sound familiar?’

‘Thor is Asgardian,’ Steve said, ‘a god of thunder.’

‘You’re talking about Norse mythology,’ said Howard, nodding as he understood. ‘Goodness, there are gods? A god of thunder might have come in useful, mightn’t he, Ms Potts?’

‘Indeed, sir,’ said Pepper, setting a tea tray down on the small table between the two armchairs. Recognising the look on her face, Steve sat quickly in the other chair and was rewarded with a smile as Pepper set the tea set and cake stand on the dollied table, whisking the tray away. ‘Will that be all, Mr. Stark?’

‘For now, thank you, Ms. Potts; go spend time with your husband, he seems especially nervous today,’ said Howard.

‘Very well, Mr. Stark,’ said Pepper. She was businesslike as ever, but her smile had a warmth to it that Steve had only seen in Tony’s direction, sans the fond exasperation. The fitted suit and sky high heels had been replaced by a neat dress with shoes that were only an inch tall. She closed the doors behind her when she left.

‘She’s a godsend that woman,’ said Howard once Pepper had shut the door behind her. ‘I was lucky to find them, both of them. They’ve been very loyal, amazingly so, really, for someone in my position. ’

‘That’s what Tony loves about them,’ said Steve. ‘They mean a lot to him.’

Howard smiled. ‘If they take half the care of him that they do of me then Tony’s in safe hands, I’m glad. Pour the tea, Steven, there’s a good lad.’

Steve obediently poured the tea and handed the delicate cup and saucer to Howard The china rattled as shaking hands took it. Howard rested it on his lap, slowly bringing the cup to his wrinkled lips, sipping, and placing the cup back down with a gentle scrape. Some of the tea splashed over the side into the saucer.

‘Now then, Steven, tell me, how do you come here still looking twenty-five?’ said Howard, smiling at his oldest friend.

‘I’m not sure exactly,’ said Steve. ‘I did something stupid and here I am.’

‘Howard nodded, ‘it’s amazing how often that’s the answer.’

Steve felt so ashamed. ‘Howard, I – I wished I’d never been born.’

‘Your poor mother,’ said Howard taking a biscuit, ‘all that work and you wish you’d never been born.’

‘She’d be appalled if they could see me now, they both would,’ said Steve looking at his feet.

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ said Howard. Steve looked hopefully and Howard gave him a fatherly smile. ‘It takes a lot for parents to be appalled. We might be disappointed from time to time, angry even, but appalled? That’s a strong word, Steve.’

‘I have to get back, Howard, I didn’t leave things so well with Tony. I have to fix this.’ Steve looked into the familiar blue eyes – the same eyes he had first seen when he had woken up – and realised they were much lighter than they used to be; cataracts had set in. They still looked like his son’s eyes though.

‘Now that sounds like something your parents would be proud of,’ said Howard. ‘First of all we need to figure out how you got here.’

‘And how you remember me,’ said Steve, something suddenly occurring to him. He felt rather stupid that he hadn’t thought of it before.

‘What now?’ said Howard, holding out his cup.

Steve refilled his cup, adding a splash of milk. It still amazed him walking into supermarkets to see rows and rows of milk there for the taking, mountains of unrationed food. Tony had started shopping for groceries at the age of thirty-nine just to see the look on Steve’s face when they walked in – and to laugh at him when Steve asked what the lobsters were. He was from Depression-era Brooklyn, he didn’t know!

‘Well, if this is a world where I never existed at all – not that I didn’t become Captain America, or that I wasn’t brought out of the ice –‘

‘You have very depressing wishes,’ Howard muttered into his cup.

‘Then how do you remember me?’ asked Steve.

‘I’m just lucky?’ suggested Howard with a twinkle of his old mischief.

‘I’ve got to find Wanda,’ said Steve, getting out of his chair.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ said Howard, flapping his hand at him. ‘I’ll get Virginia.’ He picked up a small phone and called Pepper on speakerphone. ‘Ms Potts, is my guest’s friend with you?’

‘We’re just getting her some clothes, Mr. Stark,’ said Pepper in her disapproving voice that still managed to be very polite. Steve was well-versed with her dislike of half-naked women in her domain.

‘Ah, very good – send her in once you’re done, would you, please?’

‘Of course, Mr. Stark, will you need anything else?’

‘Perhaps another cup if she wants tea.’

‘Of course, Mr. Stark.’

‘Thank you, Ms. Potts.’

While they waited for Wanda, Howard told Steve a bit about this new place he had landed in. It was worse than Steve had imagined. Wanda hadn’t just taken him out of the timeline and let the world go on as it had been – he should have guessed from Howard’s presence alone – this was a completely new timeline, one where Steve never existed at all. One where Captain America had never existed at all. Just like Scarlet Witch had said.

‘Did we still win the war?’ Steve asked.

‘We did,’ said Howard. ‘Took in a lot of Nazi scientists that sought immunity.’

‘Operation Paperclip,’ said Steve. ‘I read about it.’

‘I lived through it,’ said Howard darkly. ‘Even worked with some of them. They didn’t like me much, and the feeling was mutual. I worked with the rocket and electronic scientists. Intelligence was none of my business and I wouldn’t touch medicine with a ten foot pole. I got out of there when the war was over; went back to my company, got married, had a kid. I swore I’d never get involved in that stuff again. That lasted until the Culling.’

‘You didn’t want to be in a war,’ said Steve.

‘Life is a war here, Steve, there is no reprieve. You remember Germany in those days, right? The fear, so heavy you could taste it, cloying on your tongue, nothing could get it off your skin. You didn’t talk to people, you didn’t go out at night. You kept your head down and prayed your family made it to morning. That us, Stevo, that’s the great United States of America. Mutants, anyone who shows powers or sympathises... they just disappear in the middle of the night. Operation Condor came to town and the vultures have been circling ever since.’

Steve lent back in his seat. ‘How did it get to this?’

Howard shrugged. ‘This is a world without heroes, Steve. It’s as simple and as devastating as that – we never had any heroes.’

‘The Avengers?’

‘Terrorists.’

‘The Young Avengers?’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘The X-Men?’

‘Boy band?’

‘No, though they are partial to Lycra.’ Howard smiled. ‘The Fantastic Four?’

‘Nope.’ Howard shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Steve.’

Steve fell back into his seat with a tired sigh. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘In the words of a nun, let’s start at the beginning, the beginning is a very good place to start.’

Steve thought for a moment, ‘Sound of Music,’ he said, pointing at Howard.

Howard smiled. ‘Very good. Ah, my dear, how nice of you to join us!’ for Wanda had just walked in the room wearing a red pair of Pepper’s jeans and a red wool cardigan. She looked... fluffy, for Wanda. ‘Pull up a seat, there we are. I sense we’re going to be here for a while, the least we can do is be comfortable.’

‘Now that our lady is red is with us perhaps we can get down to business,’ said Howard when Wanda was settled with a biscuit and a cup of tea. ‘Steven here seems terribly confused, so, Ms Maximoff, if you could prevail us of the facts, we will see if we can make sense of this. Bonbon?’

Wanda waved the dish of French sweets away, as did Steve. ‘More for me,’ said Howard, popping on in his mouth. ‘Virginia always says they’ll rot my teeth but as I tell her, they’re not my teeth now are they?’ Howard smiled brilliantly, sucking the sweet with relish, and gestured at Wanda to begin.

Wanda clearly had no idea how to take Howard. Steve remembered feeling like that, and hid his smug smile behind his refilled teacup.

‘I sent Steve here, I lost my temper. My children had died shortly after they were born, and as I was putting flowers on their grave I hear Steve at one of the nearby graves saying to Tony that he wished he’d never been born. So I made it happen, it was an accident, and I’ve been trying to fix it ever since,’ said Wanda succinctly.

‘What do you mean trying?’ Steve asked.

‘I’ve lost my powers,’ Wanda said.

Steve was speechless.

‘Well, bugger,’ said Howard. ‘More tea?’


	8. An Idea Is Nearly the Same As a Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve comes up with an idea of how to get them home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: mentions of the Holocaust, concentration camps.

‘You have no powers?’ Steve said aghast.

‘None whatsoever,’ said Wanda. ‘It seems I have stepped into the place of other self and ... they’re gone.’

‘Well you are dead,’ said Howard conversationally, sipping the fresh tea that Pepper had brought (she had taken away his bonbons, something he had sulked about).

Only Steve seemed shocked by this news. Wanda took it rather well. She went to the drinks cabinet, sunk a shot of whiskey, and said, ‘I thought as much. You’ll have to fill in the rest, Mr. Stark.’

‘How is Wanda dead?’ asked Steve. ‘She’s our only way home!’

‘The Culling,’ said Howard.

‘What on earth is the Culling?’

‘You know the Night of the Long Knives, the Night of Broken Glass?’ said Howard.

‘Yes, they were strategic moves by the Nazis against their enemies,’ said Steve.

‘The Culling was the sort of same thing. Complicity and conformity were ways of life during the Cold War, something the politicians took advantage of. First, those with abilities were forced to register. Then, when the registry was complete, the Culling began. Night after night, for several months, the American government moved against those with powers – mutants, mutants, anyone with more than normal abilities,’ said Howard. ‘People, whole families, disappeared without trace.’

‘What happened to them?’ asked Steve, leaning forward in his seat, appalled.

‘The same thing that happened to the Jews, political dissenters, homosexuals, gypsies, those with mental or physical disabilities in the Third Reich,’ said Howard. ‘They were sent to the camps. Whispers began, rumours, rumours of scientific experiments, the assimilated Nazi scientists doing things that they hadn’t been able to on a large scale during the War because of lack of numbers.’

Steve felt sick. He’d been to some of the worst concentration camps, seen the damage wrought there. He couldn’t hear this.

‘Wanda died at the hands of her father,’ said Howard. ‘Erik Lensherr recognised the signs. He tried to tell people but he wasn’t exactly a figure of trust even amongst mutants. When people started to disappear, he swore he wouldn’t let them near his family so he killed them while they slept, only moments before SHIELD knocked down his door. A team of forty was sent against him, only two survived – one was paralysed from the neck down after Erik used his own dog tags to throw him down the stairs. The other shot himself in the head – whether he was a coward when faced with someone who could fight back for once, or whether Erik manipulated the gun was a matter of great debate and polemic. According to the autopsy, which I stole, such a massive exertion of power triggered a massive fatal stroke. Erik died with his children.’

Steve hadn’t been a fan of Erik’s, the living embodiment of what Steve feared everyday he would become from what he had seen during the war, but he found himself understanding the man. Erik had lived in concentration camps, he knew what would happen to his children if he didn’t protect them in the only way he had been left.

‘Charles, the one Erik had been most concerned for, had tried to get to England but was stopped at the border. He and Mystique were detained. Mystique was taken apart down to her DNA to understand how her mutation worked. They induced insomnia in Charles until he couldn’t shield against his power anymore. They recorded his brain patterns, trying to understand the nature of telepathy and find a shield against it. He was driven mad within a matter of weeks.’

‘What about Logan?’ Steve asked.

Howard smiled. ‘Logan is a particular favourite of mine. He and Clint started the Avengers, tried to bring the truth out. From Quebec they formed the Avengers, began the underground railway and started moving people out. When this was set up they formed a team and became more militarised, eventually becoming a terrorist organisation. Their goal continues to be the liberation of the Negative Zone.’

‘What’s the Negative Zone?’ Steve asked the room at large.

‘A different, uninhabited dimension, unable to support life on its own,’ said Wanda.

‘They built a prison there, the perfect place to house criminals,’ said Howard, ‘there’s no way out. It’s the single biggest concentration camp in history. American has been denying its existence harder than Guantanamo Bay. The Avengers’ gained proof that the Negative Zone existed and the UN has been sanctioning America ever since.’

‘But it’s not working,’ Steve surmised.

‘Does it ever work to tell America it can’t do something it wants to?’ Howard deadpanned.

Steve ran his fingers through his hair, leaving his head in his hands. ‘I have no idea what to do.’

‘Is there anyone that might have Wanda’s powers?’ Howard asked. ‘Wanda, any relations with the same abilities?’

Wanda shook her head heavily, ‘my son, Billy, he would have had my powers if he hadn’t – he -’

‘I’m sorry for your loss, my dear,’ Howard said.

‘Thank you,’ said Wanda. Howard squeezed her hand comfortingly and Wanda covered it with her own.

Steve’s head shot up. ‘Wanda, your children died, didn’t they? But were reborn to new parents, still with their powers?’

‘How on earth does that work?’ Howard asked baffled.

‘Don’t ask, it gets very complicated very quickly,’ Wanda said, rubbing her temple.

‘Wanda!’ Steve yelled.

‘Yes! Yes, that’s right!’ Wanda shouted back.

‘So, Billy could exist! You didn’t have Billy Maximoff, but that doesn’t mean Billy _Kaplan_ doesn’t exist.’

‘But if Wanda was never his mother, he wouldn’t have gained her powers,’ Howard reasoned.

‘He’s not all mutant, he’s a mage in his own right,’ said Wanda.

‘So he might already have his powers,’ said Howard. ‘We must move quickly to find the boy and protect him!’

‘May I throw a spanner in the works?’ Wanda said. ‘I’m not sending my son against some genocidal government organisation.’

‘He’s a Young Avenger, Wanda,’ said Steve.

‘And who’s fucking fault is that!’ Wanda yelled, standing up, her tears brimming with tears. ‘You turn up and all kids can think about is wanting to be Captain bloody America! Billy and Tommy get powers and form their own little team! They’re children, Steve!’

‘It’s not my choice, Wanda!’

‘But it’s your fault! You let them go on with it! Don’t actively involve him now!’

‘He’s already involved, Wanda! If we don’t change things and Billy’s powers activate, they’re going to ship him off to the Negative Zone and slice him up!’

_Wham!_

Steve could now honestly say getting hit in the face by a Lensherr was one of the most painful things he’d experienced. Howard winced in sympathy but still muttered, ‘nice shot, my dear!’

‘You’re not using my son,’ Wanda said stubbornly.

‘He’s our only hope.’

‘We’ll find another.’

‘Another reality altering mutant, that’ll be easy,’ muttered Steve.

‘Wanda, I do understand your fear of losing your son, more than anyone,’ said Howard heavily, ‘but it is our only hope – if we can return this world to the one you are from then your son will be safe and well! If not, then I’m afraid he’s already on borrowed time...’


	9. New York, New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard takes Steve to meet this world's Avengers. Billy Kaplan getting kidnapped but takes it rather well.

Steve and Howard were walking slowly, Howard’s arm tucked into Steve’s elbow as the crowd they were moving against tried to part them. Steve remembered walking this slowly before the serum when walking alone was enough to exhaust him. Bucky would always threaten to pick him up and carry him, complaining that he could feel himself aging as they crawled down pavements. But Bucky had always slowed down, kept time with him. Tony, on the other hand, didn’t always realise when people couldn’t keep up with him, and kind of enjoyed it when they couldn’t. Tony found Steve’s inability to keep up endearing rather than irritating like with other people. Steve hadn’t really noticed: it was a slightly less barbed version of how Howard had treated everyone with smug certainty of his superior intelligence.

A world without superheroes was a bleak place indeed. New York of alternate 2012 felt a lot like the London of  1944 that Steve had lived in not so long ago. The people were scared, the buildings were pockmarked with craters, and propaganda added splashes of ugly colours to the grey gloom of the December afternoon.  Some of the buildings that seemed perfectly sound to Steve were condemned though the signs didn’t seem to say why. They bore an unfortunately familiar symbol though: the SHIELD insignia.

‘Mutants,’ Howards whispered to him as they walked passed one such building, ‘or sympathisers.’

‘It feels like the old days,’ Steve replied in the same hushed tone.

‘Told you.’

‘Are you okay to be this far from the house?’ asked Steve, gesturing at the ankle monitor.

‘Oh, please, Steven, I dissembled this thing years ago. I just didn’t have any place to go,’ said Howard, waving his cane blithely.

People walked in the same way they did back then, Steve noticed, walking purposefully along with their heads down. No one made eye contact or attempted conversations, not that New Yorkers had been known for that anyway. Instead, they all huddled deeper into their coats when they passed the crossed doors and pretended not to see the boarded up windows.

‘This is bad,’ Steve muttered. ‘This is really bad. Did nothing change after the war?’

‘Sure it did,’ said Howard, ‘it got worse.’

‘I hope Billy is up for this,’ said Steve.

‘I hope Billy agrees to this without turning us in,’ said Howard.

‘But if he’s a mage too...’ said Steve.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time people thought turning others in would get them leniency,’ said Howard. ‘It never works but unfounded hope is a human condition.’

Howard sounded just as bleak as Tony did sometimes. Though he had not known Tony long it hurt him to hear him sound so hopeless. Thirty-eight was too young to be broken.

‘What does it look like in your world?’ Howard asked.

‘Different,’ said Steve. ‘What’s that?’

‘The World Trade Centre,’ said Howard. ‘It’s sort of an important building.’

‘I’ve never seen it before,’ said Steve, craning up to look at where the upper storeys disappeared into the clouds.

‘They didn’t build it in your world?’ asked Howard.

‘They did,’ said Steve, ‘but a terrorist attack took them down about ten years before I woke up from the ice.’

‘I took Tony to the grand opening,’ said Howard, tilting his head back to look up at the building too. ‘He liked the elevators the most, he asked so many questions about them.’

Steve was starting to hate that smile Howard got when he spoke of Tony. That sad, loving little smile that had first broken Steve’s heart but now it made him feel like he was never going to get home again. ‘Let’s just get to Billy okay?’

Howard steered them down a series of alleys to a wall of corrugated iron sheets. Howard walked down them with feigned unconcern, poking bits of rubbish with his cane before finally tapping a sheet three times. There was a click, the sound of a door opening, and the piece of corrugated iron Howard had hit with his cane swung up behind another to reveal an open door and a familiar face.

‘Clint?’

Clint didn’t know him so ignored him, his gaze sliding to Howard. ‘Stark,’ he said with a brief nod. His gaze went back to Steve. ‘Who’s your friend?’

‘An ally,’ said Howard. ‘We have some news that we think will interest you.’

Clint eyed them both, but let them in. Steve didn’t know how much pull Howard had but it was clearly a lot if Clint was letting an unknown person in on Howard’s say alone.

‘Forty years under house arrest and you felt like going for a walk now?’ Clint asked, leading them through the dark, graffiti covered corridor to a thick iron door. He tapped on it and there were a series of locks being undone and draws being drawn back to reveal a familiar, skinny person.

‘Spiderman?’

Peter Parker looked confused. ‘Uh, do I know you? I have a feeling I would remember someone like you if we’d met before. You look like someone that would be remembered.’

‘Can it, Pete,’ said Clint.

‘You all know each other’s real names?’ asked Steve.

‘Those of us that know their own names, yeah,’ said Clint, leading them into a brightly lit, surprisingly comfortable room.

The windows were blacked out but there must have been a good ventilation system because the air didn’t have that stale taste to it despite the windows being sealed shut. The room had a number of comfortable chairs and sofas, an open space that incorporated a kitchen and living room. There was a staircase up to a balcony that ran around all four walls with more doors leading off it than Steve could count under Clint’s watchful glare.

Clint leant against the counter than ran nearly the entire length of one wall. ‘So, what’s this really important thing you want to tell me?’

‘Oooh, is there news?’ Peter asked, hopping up to sit on the counter next to Clint.

‘Apparently, Stark here has something important to tell us,’ said Clint, who was looking doubtfully at them. At least Steve recognised it as doubtful. Those who didn’t know Clint probably thought he looked arrogantly uninterested. The guy had a scary resting face.

‘Something to help the war effort,’ said Howard, taking a seat without waiting to be invited. Steve stood to attention at his side, slightly behind Howard.

‘You don’t make weapons anymore,’ said Clint.

‘He’s not a weapon,’ said Howard. ‘Clint, this is Steve.’

‘Steve? Your weapon for the war on SHIELD is called Steve?’ asked Clint as Peter sniggered next to him.

‘What’s wrong with Steve?’ Steve muttered.

‘In his world, they call him Captain America,’ Howard announced grandly.

Peter fell off the bar laughing so hard, saved only by his reflexes. Clint didn’t laugh. He looked Steve up and down, and then yelled for Wolverine to join them. The Canadian walked in, was given the news, looked at Steve, scoffed, and then walked back out. It was like being on stage in front of hardened soldiers all over again. They’d seen months of bloodshed and war and he was having a bit of a dance... in tights.

‘We’re freedom fighters, terrorists they call us,’ said Clint, ‘and you want us to join up with ballerina Bob over here? Sorry, Stark, you’ve had some crazy ideas in the past but this one is a bit much. Make sure you’re not followed on your way home.’

He turned away, but Howard opened his mouth for the last ace up his sleeve.

‘This isn’t the real world,’ he said. Clint turned around stony-faced. Peter just looked confused. ‘Steve made a wish, this world was created, it’s all his fault. Feel free to hit him.’

Clint didn’t just hit him, he tackled him to a wall and proceed to beat the living shit out of him until Steve grabbed his arm, forcing it away from his face. Wrapping his legs around Clint’s waist, he took hold of Clint’s shoulder and flipped them over so he could move away.

‘This is all your fault?’ Clint demanded.

‘It was an accident –‘

Peter slammed into his back, throwing him onto the coffee table which broke under their combined weight. Getting Peter off of him was a lot harder than getting away from Clint and he only managed it because Wolverine walked back in the room and removed Peter bodily from where he was trying to choke Steve and doing a really good job at it.

‘We need your help,’ said Howard from where he had not made a move to help Steve at all. He was fine hitting pedestrians with his cane but superheroes hitting Steve, oh no, can’t lift a finger, sorry. ‘Steve is from another world, a better world. We need to get him back there, it will end all of this.’

‘End all of this?’ Peter stopped trying to wiggle out of Logan’s grip and hung in his arms like a very large cat. ‘I’d like that. That instead of this would be very nice as far as I’m concerned. Steve, is it? Would you like a cookie? Aunt May makes _great_ cookies, doesn’t she, Wolvy?’

‘I told you not to call me that,’ said Logan, dropping Peter on his arse.

‘Shush!’ Clint hissed at them. ‘Stark, explain. You, explain more.’

‘I’m the only successful from Operation: Rebirth,’ said Steve, ‘a military operation designed to create a serum that would boost those injected with it to the peak of humanity.’

‘Very succinct,’ said Howard.

‘Thank you.’

‘Enough! How does this help us?’ asked Clint.

‘If I can find someone, a boy, should be a teenager, I can undo this wish,’ said Steve. ‘All this will disappear.’

‘How do you know that?’ asked Clint. ‘How do you know that? That this will change back after the wish?’

‘Wanda created the world,’ said Steve, ‘without the wish, it will be over.’

‘If this Wanda created this world, why don’t you get her to change it back?’ asked Clint.

‘Wanda doesn’t have her powers here,’ said Steve, ‘she lost them – this world’s version of her is dead so her powers don’t exist. The boy we’re trying to find is her son, they share the same power that brought us here; if we can teach Billy how to use his powers, then he can undo his mother’s spell.’

‘For the record, I hate magic,’ said Clint.

‘Likewise,’ said Stark, rubbing his head.

Steve had never missed Tony more.

 

‘We are not kidnapping a child!’ Steve hissed to Clint who was driving their unmarked van.

‘You got a better idea, Captain Liberty?’

‘Captain America.’

‘Whatever.’

‘We can’t do this! This is child endangerment, not to mention that kidnapping a minor is a felony!’ Steve hissed as they rounded the corner over to the school.

‘Look,’ Clint said, rounding on him, ‘we do it this way and the kid gets to go home saying that he was kidnapped by terrorists but released because he has no powers that are of use to us. SHIELD will let the police do a small report rather than waste the manpower on an investigation of their own. If he does have any powers, SHIELD won’t find out, and if he doesn’t have any powers then we can leave him on his doorstep with the minimum of emotional scarring.’

Steve thought about this for a moment. ‘That’s brilliant, Clint.’

‘Not my first rodeo,’ said Clint turning back to the road.

Summarily dismissed, Steve settled back into his seat thinking that out of all the things he’d done because he had to, this really wasn’t that bad. They could buy Billy some therapy. They wouldn’t need to, because they’ll be back in their own world. ‘Are you sure about this?’ Clint gave him a withering look. ‘Not your first rodeo, right.’

‘Okay, here we go, guys,’ said Clint.

Everyone in the van pulled their balaclavas down. Steve waited until he saw Billy Kaplan. ‘That’s him.’

‘Follow or grab?’ Clint asked, putting the van in gear.

‘You’re asking _now?!’_

‘You’re not answering?!’

‘Follow, _follow_!’

They followed Kaplan until he got to a quiet street where Clint floored it, Steve jumped out and bundled the boy into the back of the van, and they took off at high speeds. Fifty seconds, and they had disappeared leaving the street as quiet as the grave.

Billy was swearing up a storm in the beginning, but the panic wore off and the true fear set in. That’s when he hit them with his power, throwing them into the side of the van where they lay dazed, tangled up together. He opened the van door and took off down the street.

‘Ow,’ said Clint redundantly.

‘That’s only one of his powers,’ said Steve, sitting up gingerly.

‘Electrokinesis is only _one_ of his powers? That’s the sort of thing you mention first!’ Clint yelled at him.

‘I was working up to it!’ Steve roared back.

‘Some bloody superhero leader you are,’ Clint muttered as they struggled to their feet.

Steve sprinted off after the teenager and tackled Billy into the floor, pinning him there with his superior weight and arm length. ‘Stop fighting me! Billy! Billy, stop it!’

‘How do you know my name?’ the teenager gasped, eyes wide with fear.

‘That’s a conversation for another time,’ said Steve, hauling Billy to his feet.

 

Forty minutes later, Billy was sitting on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate, listening to the whole story again.

‘You’re from a different world?’ Billy asked over the rim of his mug.

‘Yes.’

‘Huh.’ He sipped his hot chocolate. ‘So what do you need me for?’

‘You’re really the only one that can help us,’ said Clint. ‘How do you feel like saving the world?’

‘I don’t,’ said Billy. ‘No offense to what you do and all, but I don’t really like this world, I’m pretty good with it ending.’

‘Not this world, my world,’ said Steve. ‘If you don’t help me, this is the world that you will be stuck with forever.’

‘Okay, but why me?’

‘You’re the only person that can help me,’ said Steve. ‘It’s a long story, but your powers plus a friend of mine will get me home.’

‘Right.’

‘What about the people stuck in the Negative Zone?’ asked Clint.

‘They won’t be there when this spell works,’ said Steve.

‘I can’t take that chance,’ said Clint. ‘I need to get these people out.’

Howard shuffled in. ‘We have a small complication that might aid Clint.’

Steve groaned, he had a feeling he really didn’t want to know what Howard was about to say.

‘Wanda Maximoff has just been arrested by SHIELD,’ said Howard, ‘they ran her DNA and took her directly to Negative Zone. We need to get her out, and if we’re getting one person out –‘

‘We might as well get everyone out,’ Clint finished.

‘Oh Christ,’ Steve said sitting down heavily. ‘I told her not to wander off!’

 

‘So, why are you here?’ asked Billy, stretching as they stood up from planning their break in into the Negative Zone.

‘Wanda sent me here,’ said Steve, ‘before she knew that it would send her to a place where she had no powers and couldn’t send us back.’

‘Yes, I got that from the others,’ said Billy. ‘But why did she bring you here? It’s a bit strange, isn’t it? Taking someone to another plane of existence isn’t a treat, and it would have taken a lot of effort.’

‘She said something about teaching me a lesson,’ said Steve. Billy looked blank. ‘Have you ever seen _It’s A Wonderful Life?’_ Nod. ‘George Bailey had to learn a lesson, right? He wished he’d never been born and the angel Clarence showed him what the world would have been like if he hadn’t and it was really bad, right?’ Another nod. ‘So it figures that I need to learn a lesson. This is what the world is like where I was never born.’

‘What’s it like in your world?’

‘Better. Not perfect, but SHIELD is a force for – not good exactly, but they’re not the same as here. Superheroes exist. Having powers isn’t something to be afraid but celebrated. If you want to help people, you can. There are some super villains, but we deal with them. It’s not a perfect world, but it’s one worth fighting for.’

‘So what’s the lesson you have learn?’

‘That I don’t live in the forties anymore,’ said Steve. ‘I was so confused after waking up in this world and it feels like I’ve been playing catching every moment while half-hoping that every time I’ll open my eyes I’ll be back where I died. Or that I would have really died. I made my peace with dying in that plane, it was fast but I was dying for a cause I thought was worth it: I was dying for people.  
‘My world – the world I left, wasn’t the world I wanted when I woke up. And now all I want is to get back to it,’ said Steve. ‘There’s someone there, well, let’s just say I didn’t leave things well with him.’

‘Your boyfriend?’

‘No!’

‘Oh. Do they not have gay superheroes?’ Billy gave a sad smile. ‘Guess that would be a miracle too far, huh?’

‘No, there are gay superheroes,’ said Steve. ‘The X-Men have a few I think. What about the gay community here?’

Billy snorted. ‘What gay community? They got rid of superheroes, what makes you think they’d let the gay community continue?’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah. Guess I’m screwed in both respects, huh?’ said Billy. ‘So can you really change all of this?’

‘No, but you can,’ said Steve. ‘If you want to change the world, it’s up to you.’

‘Do you want to go back?’

‘Yes, I really do,’ said Steve. ‘I felt like I couldn’t save anyone, like everything I gave and lost wasn’t worth it because I never changed anything. This sort of proves me wrong.’ He smiled at Billy. ‘I couldn’t be happier about it.’

‘You must be someone pretty important,’ said Billy. ‘I’ll never be that important.’

‘You’d be surprised. I’m not that important on my own but I’ve been fortunate enough to meet some very important people and maybe have an influence on them,’ said Steve. ‘I am Captain America, and without him the world’s a pretty ugly place. But that’s him, not me. The shield, the suit, that’s important, I’m just the guy filling it. But I did the best I could, and it looks like I did better than I thought. If you get me home, you’ll be important, too. You’re a hero in my world, Billy. You and your friends, you started out young, on your own, but you became superheroes and you’re doing really well.’

Billy scoffed. ‘I’m not a hero. And I don’t have any friends.’

‘You have more than you think,’ said Steve. ‘Like me, you have more than you think. You should trust yourself more, Billy. I trust you.’

Billy chuckled, ‘I guess that means more in your world where you’re not the crazy guy who turned up saying this existence isn’t real?’

Steve laughed, ‘yes, I guess so. I’ll just have to tell that version of you too when you get me home.’


	10. The Negative Zone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing brings people together like a mass prison breakout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the long wait, but I have now finished university!

Steve thought he would be stuck there for weeks, maybe months, in order to plan a break in into the Negative Zone, but the Avengers had a plan all laid out and ready to go. It took some tweaking to accommodate Billy and Steve into the plan but that was the easy part. Much harder was training Billy until he had sufficient control over his powers to take him into a potential warzone.

‘Focus, Billy,’ said Steve, glad he perfected the tone between patient and firm a long time ago.

‘I’m trying,’ Billy said from where he was currently sat on the banisters running around the upper floor.

‘Just fly down.’

‘I can’t, I can’t concentrate on flying when I’m scared of breaking my neck!’

‘Walk down then,’ Steve said, slightly exasperated. Perfected tone or not, he was used to training soldiers, not reluctant teenagers.

Billy honestly looked as though he hadn’t thought of that. He swung his legs over the railing and came running back down to the open living room, throwing himself over the back of the sofa to sit next to Steve who passed him a bottle of water.

‘Billy, what are you scared of?’ Steve asked.

‘Uh – bullies?’ Billy looked at him like the answer was written on Steve’s face.

‘When you use your magic, what are you afraid of? You’re really good until a certain point, and then it’s like you realise you’re using your powers and you get scared.’

‘Well, yeah,’ said Billy, ‘this stuff can get me killed.’

‘Your powers are in your hands to control, Billy.’

‘Not out there,’ said Billy, ‘SHIELD can arrest me for this.’ He gulped down some more of his water, looking away from Steve like he was worried about the man’s reaction.

‘Not for long,’ said Steve strongly, ‘I’ll make it better, Billy, I swear. This is my fault, and I need your help, but I’m going to make it better.’

Billy didn’t look convinced that he was the key, but Steve supposed it was a lot to ask of a sixteen year old to step in as the saviour of a world he didn’t even like for a reward he wouldn’t remember getting.

‘I wasn’t much older than you when I joined the war,’ said Steve. ‘I was twenty-five when laid down my life for it, only to turn twenty-six in 2012.’

‘Must have been weird,’ said Billy numbly.

‘It was certainly strange,’ said Steve. ‘I’m not asking you to lay down your life, Billy.’

‘Just change the world so I don’t exist anymore,’ said Billy.

‘You can’t think of it like that, Billy, you do exist – a happier you, I think – and what you do now will return you there.’

‘Will I remember any of this?’ asked Billy.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Steve gently.

‘Good, I don’t want to,’ said Billy. ‘I just want this to be over with.’

 

‘Pensive brooding from a high vantage point is my thing,’ said Clint, dropping down to sit next to Steve on the edge of the mezzanine, looking down at the open space beneath them were several people slept on mats and what little furniture would allow slumber – Billy had curled himself under the coffee table.  ‘Why you are stealing my pensive brooding?’

‘Just thinking,’ said Steve, zeroing in on Billy roll over in his sleep. ‘I’ve been here for over a month, I was just thinking about what they were doing in my world, whether time has continued there as well. I wonder if they know I’m gone.’

‘If Tony is as much a Stark as you say he is, he’s probably knocking down dimension walls as we speak,’ said Clint. ‘With a sledgehammer.’

‘Tony’s smart, he’ll figure it out,’ said Steve. ‘I hope. Or he thinks I’ve gotten fed up of that world and dropped off the grid. He might not try to find me – if he thinks I’ve left him.’

Clint raised an eyebrow at Steve’s wording but let it go without speaking – if Captain Spangles was doing Howard’s son, it was none of his business. ‘We’ll get you home, but right now, you need to sleep, we’re attacking the Negative Zone tomorrow.’

They headed downstairs, grabbed a space to sleep and settled down. Sleeping in a crowded room with a large scale attack taking place in a matter of hours wasn’t an easy thing to do, but it was something Steve had mastered during the war. He closed his eyes, and counted the breaths of those around him, falling asleep before long.

He woke up before the rest of them, and got himself ready. Clint woke up not long after and between them they made a large breakfast for everyone. It was strangely domestic, one of those small moments of normal that seem abnormal because of the situation. He wished he could say moments like these were rare in his life. They weren’t.

He hadn’t sat down during a brief in years, he was usually leading it. Instead, he sat and watched as Clint and Howard outlined their plan one last time. Howard pointed to a picture of Wanda gained from his house’s CCTV, telling them she must be protected at all costs. Billy jiggled in his chair next to Steve, a mixture of teenage energy, adrenaline, and sheer terror.

‘You’ll be fine, Billy,’ said Steve, ‘I’ll take care of you.’

Billy didn’t look convinced, but at the moment he didn’t look anything but nauseous.

‘Any questions?’ Howard asked from the front. ‘No? Then, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to get arrested.’

 

One day, in another world, Prison 42 would take up most of this dimension. Wanda’s spell hadn’t affected this space, but neither had Tony Stark yet and the prison here had none of his humane, tech-heavy approach. It was old-fashioned steel bars and concrete blocks this time. It was certainly more hard hitting than a prison for humans, but SHIELD didn’t have that distinct Stark flair. Clint was eternally grateful that Howard had removed himself from favour before the prison was built, keeping it clear of technological mastery.

‘This is a really bad plan,’ said Billy from behind Steve, jangling his cuffs.

‘It’s not a bad plan, relax,’ Steve murmured.

Billy continued to mutter behind him, earning a zap from one of the guard’s electric baton. He hissed in pain, but when Steve tried to go for the guard, he was brought up short by the cuffs he was wearing. They were all locked together chain gang style so when Steve tried to break rank to confront Billy’s assailant his sudden movement did nothing but cause him to fall, bringing Clint, who had been in front of him, and Billy down with him. Like a line of dominoes, the entire row of supers were dragged closer to the epicentre. Some of the guards around them laughed, but most waded in to pull the new prisoners away from either, grabbing at them irritably.

‘Now!’ Clint yelled.

Chaos truly descended. There had been one guard to every prisoner, and it was simple enough to break the holds and loop their cuffs. There was one thing that Steve learned growing up poor on the streets of Brooklyn that he had never shared with Tony: pick pocketing.  Bucky had taught him and while he had never been as good at it as Bucky, who seemed to be the Artful Dodger in true form, it was simple enough to relieve the guard holding him of his keys and secret them up his sleeve. Unlike picking pennies during the Depression so as not to starve, Steve’s conscience didn’t trouble him when he slid the keys in the pocket of his prison uniform.

They were shuffled back into line, Steve was zapped for his part in the disruption, and they were finally hauled into their cells.

‘You didn’t hit him too hard, did you?’ asked Billy.

‘He’ll be fine,’ said Steve. ‘We’ll take him with us when we leave.’

‘If we don’t take him as a hostage they’ll know he was an inside man,’ said Billy. He collapsed onto the lower bunk, covering his face with his hands. ‘God, I sound like a pro at this.’

‘You’re doing fine.’

‘I feel like I’m barely holding on here,’ said the teenager, his voice muffled by his hands.

‘Like I said, you’re doing fine,’ said Steve. Billy raised his eyebrows at him. ‘Sweaty palms, surges of energy like you’re itching to do something?’ The boy nodded. ‘You’re body’s getting ready to fight. Try and relax for now, you’ll need it later.’

‘I hate the waiting.’

‘Everyone hates the waiting. And then they all wished they could wait some more when it’s time to fight.’

‘Sounds about right.’ Billy sighed, stretched out on the bed, shifted around, and then sat up again. ‘I can’t relax.’

‘Try.’

‘You’re so weird.’

‘Thank you.’ Steve heaved himself up onto the top bunk and stretched out, closing his eyes. He focused on his body but he found no injury from the scuffle earlier. Well, that was a positive.

Billy stood up, leaning against the bunk beds, his chin resting on his forearms. ‘Everything alright?’

‘I’m not injured from earlier,’ said Steve, looking over at him. ‘A bumped shoulder, but nothing serious, it’ll be healed by lights out. Are you hurt?’

‘No. At least I don’t think so,’ said Billy. He looked at Steve pensively. ‘You’re different.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘It’s like a switch, between how you were earlier, and how you are now. You weren’t even like this during training. You’re kind of... scary. Focused. What was war like?’

Steve frowned a little at the sudden change in topic but went with it. ‘You don’t need to know.’

‘We studied the Second World War in school,’ said Billy. ‘Mr Stark was a hero! I don’t know, I didn’t like some of the stuff he did.’

‘It was war time, Billy, none of the stuff we did was because we liked it. We did it because it had to be done not because we wanted to.’

‘Does it get easier? Killing people?’

‘Honestly? No,’ said Steve. ‘It never gets easier, and no, you never really forget. Some people deal with being a murderer better than others, I suppose, but you never really forget what you’re capable of.’

‘Will I have to kill?’ asked Billy.

‘No,’ said Steve sharply. Billy looked taken aback, drawing away for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t ask that of you,’ Steve said gently, and Billy rested against the bunk again.

‘I would have liked to see the world you’re from,’ said Billy. ‘It sounds nice.’

‘It was – is – will be, I suppose,’ said Steve. ‘I hadn’t given it much of a chance if I’m honest. Get some sleep, Billy, it’s going to be a long night. I promised your mother I’d get you through this.’

Billy nodded, too distracted to question which mother Steve meant since they’d kidnapped him from school, and clambered into the bunk below. Steve could hear him shifting around, trying to get comfortable. He tried the trick Steve had taught him over the last month to help, stretching and relaxing every muscle from his toes upwards, focusing closely on each movement. Somewhere around relaxing his knees, Billy fell asleep.

Steve was not in such a hurry to sleep. It was eight hours until breakfast and he only needed half of that since the serum. Such a change from his childhood which was spent mostly in the safety of his bed, now he neither needed much sleep nor did he want it. Sleep brought dreams, and dreams brought nightmares of things past that Steve would rather forget.

But still he slept, dreaming not of war for once but of the new home he had left behind and the inhabitants of Stark Tower. He had missed Christmas and that saddened him, but the Christmas of his dreams proved to be a merry event, the kind that Steve had never witnessed in life. Tony had spoken at great lengths on his plans for Christmas after finding out about Steve’s humble Christmases of the past, weaving images in Steve’s mind that rivalled those he had seen on the television screens in the front window of the electronics shops. Steve was sure it would have been a time to remember.

 

Breakfast proved to be a trying time for them all. Everyone they wanted to converse with was so close, but it would take months to make contact with them all. Wanda stood out in the crowd, even in the prison scrubs rather than her trademark red, and Steve was quick to get a seat next to her at her table. Splitting the genders hadn’t been a big priority of the administration so everyone mixed together outside of their cells.

‘Steven.’

‘Are you alright?’

‘I’ve been arrested and imprisoned in the Negative Zone,’ Wanda bit out, ‘I’ll say no.’

‘I have something that might make you feel better,’ said Steve. He beckoned at Billy who hurried over, his breakfast shaking on his tray. ‘Wanda, this is-‘

‘Billy,’ Wanda breathed.

‘Hi,’ Billy said awkwardly.

Steve hadn’t told Billy who Wanda was to him, he didn’t consider it his place. He knew it would answer a big part of the question of why Billy was so imperative to this operation, but he was already throwing the kid through so many flaming hoops, one more headfuck could be dispensed with. Wanda could tell the kid before they left if she wanted.

‘Sit down, Billy,’ said Steve, gesturing to the sit beside Wanda. ‘We have a lot to discuss.’

Wanda held out her hands unconsciously, seeming to guide Billy into the seat next to her. Her hands gripped his shoulders, unbelieving that she was finally able to feel her son.

‘Have you spoken to many of the prisoners?’ Steve asked urgently.

‘Not as much as I would have liked,’ Wanda confided as Billy tucked into his porridge, her arm around his shoulders. ‘Human rights don’t apply to mutants, they make up their own rules about time outside. We spent most of the day inside our cells. Any ‘exercise time’ is taken in small groups to make sure we can’t overwhelm them. The guards walked them up and down in front of the cells, making sure to keep us far enough away from the bars that talking is impossible.’

‘Damn,’ Steve muttered under his breath. ‘Is there any way to talk to the others with any kind of speed?’

‘At night,’ Wanda said immediately. ‘We make them more nervous at night, they don’t bother trying to shut us up. We can get the word out.’

‘Snitches?’

Wanda shook her head. ‘Surprisingly, no. They all know they have nothing to gain from ratting anyone out to the guards. There’s so much turnover with the guards it’s impossible to make a relationship with any of them to make it worth your while. The guard you got the keys from was a sympathiser long before he got the job.’

‘At night then,’ said Steve. ‘Spread the word, quickly. I have a set of keys, I’ll make it to the main guard room, open all the doors and turn off the power suppressors. All they have to do is run. We’ll have enough magic users to get us out of this hell hole.’

Wanda nodded. ‘We’ll get it done.’

 

The Avengers had been torn between giving the prisoners more time to hear of the plan, and wanting them all out as quickly as possible. Most of them argued caution learnt from a lifetime of covering their trails, but Steve knew that time was not always a benefit. Once the bars were open, those behind them would do what came naturally: they would run.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me to make you invisible?’ Billy whispered. ‘I’m quite good at that. Probably from years of wanting to be invisible in high school,’ he muttered.

‘Magic trips the alarm,’ Steve murmured. ‘Don’t do anything until I turn them all off.’

‘A little magic trips the alarm but you walking out the door won’t do anything?’ Billy hissed urgently.

‘The bars can be opened individually without tripping a sensor,’ said Steve, getting himself ready, ‘you know that. Shush, I have to make sure I’m ready.’

Billy fell back into his bunk, folding his arms and huffing. Steve grabbed his ankle, breaking the teenage grump. ‘Be ready to run, Billy, as soon as the door opens, do you understand?’ He shook the boy’s leg when Billy didn’t reply quickly enough. ‘Do you understand!’

‘Yes,’ Billy muttered.’

‘Where will you be when I find you?’

‘Outside with Wanda,’ said Billy.

‘Good. Stay away from the guards. I’ll take out as many as I can, so will the Avengers. Be careful.’

Billy nodded, and Steve crept to the bars, sneaking his hand out between the bars and unlocking them with the key he had taken during the scuffle his first day. Steve anticipated resistance but the bars slid back silently. As he moved out of his cell onto the landing, Steve saw that this Clint was as good at gathering information as the one from his own dimension; the guards all followed the patrol patterns they had learned in the briefs. It was easy enough for Steve to get in place in dark corners and snap their necks before moving on. There was no honour in killings such as these, but Steve had many kills under his belt, not all of them from heroic battles written about in books. There was an awful moment when the guard he grabbed was better trained than the others and managed to break free before Steve could kill him. Cap chased him down the landing, passed the prisoners’ cell. The guard called for help, but the inhabitants of the cells began yelling and shouting, drowning him out. Before long the entire cell block was hollering. Steve grabbed the guard and twisted his neck sharply. The man fell to the floor and a cheer rang through the building. Steve flipped over the side of the railings and landed on the main floor a level below. He raced to the guard room – empty of the guards who had rushed out to see what had caused the sudden commotion – and unlocked it, relocking it behind him when the guards who had left it turned to follow him. From there it was a simple matter of flipping switches and pressing buttons. In quick succession the green light above each cell denoting that the power suppressors were on turned red and the bars slipped open.

As Steve had predicted, the prisoners came flooding out, quickly overpowering the remaining guards. Steve unlocked the main doors that led to the rest of the prison complex and they flooded outwards in a wave, magic and powers that had been stifled for too long sparking to life again. Steve took up the rear, making sure the cells were empty before following them quickly. Someone blew up the gates out of the prison and they emptied into the yard around the prison, similarly blowing up the walls that still surrounded them.

Steve pushed his way through the crowd to find that Clint had located Billy and Wanda. The teenager looked terrified and completely out of his depth while Wanda glared at anyone who got within ten feet of her son, Clint included.

‘Is everyone okay?’ asked Steve urgently.

‘Surprisingly, no casualties,’ said Clint, looking over the crowd.

‘What about the guards?’

‘Other than the ones you killed? They’re all dead,’ said Clint.

‘So there were casualties,’ said Steve.

‘None that I count,’ said Clint.

Wanda broke in before the two could start butting heads. ‘What now? We’ve got eight hundred mutants and supers stuck in the Negative Zone.’

Clint held up the warden’s card that activated the gateway of the Negative Zone. ‘We swiped this. It’ll get us back to our own world. We can get you two back to your own dimension from there.’

‘Are you sure you can get everyone to the safe houses without us?’ Steve asked.

‘Well, Wanda doesn’t have any powers and you can’t teleport people, so I think we’ll have to manage,’ said Clint with a smile.

Steve smiled, ‘then let’s get these people home.’


	11. Clicking the Ruby Heels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the prison breakout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise to those of you still reading - being a full-fledged adult proved more time-consuming than I thought it would be!

The Avengers safe house was not just a random space the group had occupied because it was big enough to house everyone as Steve had thought. The building was a defunct SHIELD holding area scouted out and occupied by the Avengers once they had their plan in place, over a year before the finally got themselves arrested and sent to the Negative Zone.

‘So… why couldn’t we just get to the Negative Zone from there, why did we have to get arrested?’ asked Billy, a mite petulant as he rubbed the taser burn on the back of his neck.

‘SHIELD disabled it before they left, it’s a one way door – and it’s magic-tamper proof,’ Clint said when Billy opened his mouth to ask. ‘We always knew we were going to have to get into the Negative Zone to get anybody out.’

‘And a mass prison break was your solution?’ asked Billy. ‘Are you always this much of an overachiever?’

Clint frowned and Billy suddenly found the floor very interesting. ‘We’ve got to get moving,’ said the archer. ‘We’ve got them into basic geographical groups. There’s a kid that can open portals, we’re sending him through first he can send them out to the safe houses as they come in.’

‘Why can’t we just send them to the safe houses from here?’ asked Billy.

Steve saw Clint sigh a little as he dealt with the teen’s seemingly unending questions. ‘I get that you’re new to this, kid, but we’ve been planning this for over a year, we’ve covered every angle, every eventuality. We know what we’re doing. There’s a failsafe built into the portal out of here, but it’s got a onetime use only in case of a break out like this one and we’re not sure how long it’ll stay open once we’ve activated it – every second you waste asking a question we’ve already got the answer to is another second that portal might close and trap us here. You’re going to have to trust me on this, okay?’

Billy gulped, nodded, and went back to biting his nails in Steve’s shadow.

‘You probably thought I was being too harsh on him,’ Clint said to Steve as they corralled the groups through the glowing portal – most weren’t too thrilled at the idea of being locked in another small room again.

‘No,’ said Steve, gently ushering a girl who couldn’t be much older than fifteen through the portal. ‘You were right – we don’t have time to answer a lot of questions we covered in the briefing, we need to get these people out of here.’

There was some pushing and shoving – at one point a distinctly English voice was heard to say “don’t these bloody Americans know how to queue properly?”. Funnily enough, a English mutant came through the portal with a broken nose he certainly didn’t get in the breakout – but eventually Steve, Billy, Wanda and Clint finally made it through the portal. Neither Steve nor Clint would leave while there were still people in the Negative Zone, Billy wouldn’t leave Steve, and Wanda wouldn’t leave Billy.

Steve took one look at the twisted remains of the Negative Zone prison. ‘I can’t let this happen in my world,’ he said softly.

Clint squeezed his shoulder, leaving his hand there. ‘Things sound better in your world. Just – don’t let the government in.’

Steve nodded, and turned away from the sight. He’d seen too many burnt out buildings, rubble strewn across charred landscapes, twisted bodies scattered without thought to proper burial. He just wanted to go home. The twenty-first century was loud and confusing, but he found himself missing it. He belonged to a different time, a time of manners now considered old-fashioned, of wars that still rang in his ears but were now stuff of books and children’s school essays. Everything he had known he had lost, and now he just wanted to get out of this world where nothing had changed – people were still being imprisoned for their genetics, children were still being killed. This place was still Hell, and he wanted to go home.

‘Our turn,’ Clint said. He too had turned to look at the remains of the prison but there was a hardness on his face as opposed to a sadness on Steve’s, one Steve had seen on many faces as they bombed Hydra bases and cleared concentration camps.

They stepped through the portal into a largely empty Avengers base. The portal making mutant waved merrily before Geronimo-ing his way through his own portal which closed behind him, leaving only the slight buzzing of the doorway to the Negative Zone. Clint swiped the stolen card through the slot on the portal console and the portal closed with small crackle of static.

‘Excuse me for a second,’ Clint said with a calmness that belied his obvious tension as he took a sledgehammer from the corner of the hall and when to town on the portal doorway, destroying it for good.

‘I wondered what that was for,’ said Billy idly as he sat down with a thump on the sofa. ‘I’m tired. And hungry.’

‘I’ll make you something to eat,’ said Wanda.

Billy merely nodded in the face of her unusually exuberant offer and slumped sideways, falling asleep in a matter of seconds. Wanda gently covered him with a blanket, tucking him in as carefully as  she would a newborn baby, and went to riffle through the kitchen.

Steve sat down in an overstuffed armchair and watched as Clint took the portal apart with his hands now, the sledgehammer having been cast aside in favour of his own fists. ‘What will you do now?’

Clint gave the last piece an almighty kick which bent the metal, exposed wires sparking and jumping. Exhausted, he half-fell to sit on the floor, numbly staring at his battered, bleeding hands. He gave a tired shrugged. ‘We have an army again. We’ll regroup. Hit them back. We have hope again, for the first time since I can remember.’

Steve remembered what it was like to have hope again after so long. Most people thought hope would make a person giddy, but mostly it made them tired. Hope didn’t seem so great when it seemed like all there was to hope for was more of the same. More fighting, more bloodshed, more losing loved ones. Yeah, Clint was tired.

But Steve wasn’t anymore. He was twenty-five, he’d like to see what it was like to get to thirty. It had once seemed so impossible, now? Five years wasn’t so far away. Not when technically he was ninety-three. A ninety-eight year old celebrating his thirtieth birthday – if anyone could find the birthday card for that, it was going to be Tony. Even if he had to buy Hallmark to do it.

‘When are you going home?’ Clint asked from his place on the floor.

‘I don’t know, when Wanda can get Billy to work the spell to send us home, I guess,’ said Steve, sitting down on the sofa as well. He ran his hand over his head.

‘Could be weeks,’ said Clint. ‘Boy’s just found out he has powers and he’s already broken out of a maximum security prison. He’ll need time to regroup for a spell as big as creating a new reality. If that’s what this really is.’

‘You don’t believe me?’ asked Steve. ‘You’ve met her.’

‘I’ve met a woman with no powers who likes to walk around in a scarlet leotard. There’s no reason to believe this is the result of a spell.’

Steve sighed and leaned back against the cushions, going limp. ‘It was hard to believe I’d been encased in ice for seventy years, but it was true.’

Clint grunted – whether in agreement or denial Steve couldn’t tell – and heaved himself off the floor. ‘I need a shower now everyone’s cleared out.’

Steve kept his eyes closed but heard Clint stomp up the stairs to his room. He knew he should go make use of one of the many facilities himself, but he was so warm and comfortable at the moment, even with Billy kicking him in the leg.

And someone shaking him.

‘Hey, Spangles, wake up.’

No, don’t wake him up. For the first time in months he was warm when he was asleep. No dreams of creeping ice, waking up drenched in icy sweat that froze him to the core, a chill that no serum could get rid of.

Someone was tapping his cheek. Blearily, reluctantly, even a little petulantly, Steve opened his eyes.

‘Morning,’ said Tony, looking down at him, ‘You okay?’

Steve blinked. ‘F-fine. You?’

‘I spent the last three weeks looking for you and you turn up in my living room. That’s pretty inconsiderate,’ said Tony folding his arms over his chest. ‘I was looking forward to being the big damn hero.’

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ said Steve, struggling to sit up.

‘You look like hell,’ said Tony, looking him up and down.

‘And you are as diplomatic as ever,’ said Steve, sitting forward to rest his elbows on his knees, wiping his hand down his face as though he could wipe away the exhaustion of the last few weeks.

‘JARVIS, scan,’ said Tony. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked Steve.

‘You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,’ said Steve yawning.

‘Scan complete, sir,’ said JARVIS. ‘According to my data, this is Captain Steven Rogers.’

‘Not an imposter?’ said Tony. ‘Not a robot, cyborg, demon from another dimension, clone, magically created lookalike?’

‘No, sir,’ said JARVIS. ‘This is the real Captain Rogers.’

‘What to do with you now,’ mussed Tony aloud.

‘Might I suggest a hot bath and a meal, sir?’ asked JARVIS.

‘Your computer is more compassionate than you are, Stark,’ said Natasha, sashaying in.

Tony looked like he was about to make a comment that might involve the words “pot” and “kettle”, but Steve interrupted by standing up. He swayed slightly, grateful when Tony immediately grabbed his shoulder to steady him. He clasped Tony’s elbow, blinking away the dizziness.

‘Everything okay there, champ?’ Tony asked.

Steve nodded, his head feeling fuzzy and heavy with exhaustion. ‘It’s been a long month.’

 

All Steve really wanted was a sandwich and to fall into bed, but Tony dragged him down to the workshop instead.

‘Is this necessary?’ asked Steve yawning, as he stood in the centre of the room.

‘Yep,’ said Tony. ‘You’re lucky I’m not making you strip.’

‘Not the first time I’ve been naked during a medical,’ said Steve.

The smile on Tony’s face was a little terrifying. He moved behind the console and started the scan. ‘JARVIS, full body scan, please. Check for abrasions, head injuries, the standard stuff.’

Steve stood still as JARVIS created a 3D hologram of him, his injuries pulsing in red. Walking around to where Tony stood, they looked at the screens together. It didn’t feel like that many, but his hologram was mostly red at this point reflecting the cuts and bruises that littered his body.

‘JARVIS, show the healing process,’ said Tony.

A giant clock appeared on the screens. Steve felt it was like watching the weather channel – the clock sped through the next three days and the red faded from his hologram to a consist blue.

‘Factoring Captain Roger’s healing abilities and proper rest, he should be fully healed in three days,’ said JARVIS.

‘Not likely with Natasha here,’ said Steve. ‘I should probably leave when she does.’

‘She’s here to find you,’ said Tony. ‘SHIELD had a collective heart attack when you went missing. Coulson nearly came back from dealing with the rug rats. Fury’s orders – wherever you turn up, that’s where you stay until you’re better. They can’t risk you running off again.’

‘I didn’t run off,’ said Steve, covering his mouth with his hand as he yawned widely, ‘I was sent there.’

‘Fury will be here to debrief you tomorrow,’ said Natasha, coming through the door.

‘Er, security?’ Tony said.

‘Ms. Romanov has access to this floor, sir,’ said JARVIS.

‘Who did that?’

‘Ms Potts, sir,’ said JARVIS.

Tony huffed, muttering about invasion of privacy.

‘You rest until then, Steve,’ said Natasha, ‘Colonel Fury likes to be thorough.’

Tony dearly wanted to make a remark at that but thought Natasha might shatter his kneecaps.

 

Living with Tony was like living in a five star hotel. With better views. And better bedding. And an AI system that scanned him every day to check on his healing process and suggested foods to help this process.

Living with Tony also meant living with Tony, who could be overwhelmingly thoughtful.

At least that was what he assumed the Christmas/welcome back from another dimension party was about. Personally, he’d made it about an hour before excusing himself to the balcony where he found Tony of all people, sat alone nursing a glass of water.

‘Not inside enjoying the party?’ asked Steve.

‘I find them more difficult to deal with without alcohol,’ said Tony ruefully.

‘You mind if I sit?’

Tony waved his hand at the space next to him, and Steve sat.

‘Thank you for the party,’ Steve said, realising he had no idea what to say, not having expected anyone else to be out here, and that he hadn’t thanked Tony yet, which was rude.

Tony snorted, ‘you’re welcome.’

‘Thank you for your help, Mr. Stark,’ he said.

‘Can you thank me by calling me Tony? Every time you call me Mr. Stark I turn around expecting to see my father.’

‘Seems fair, after everything,’ Steve agreed, nodding. ‘They told me you did a lot to get me back while I was gone.’

‘America’s only living national treasure goes missing for three weeks, they rope in one of the few people capable of finding him,’ said Tony blithely.

‘Natasha said you strode into Fury’s office and demanded to be included.’

‘Demanded is a strong word,’ said Tony.

‘So you didn’t ask for the job?’

Tony’s silence confirmed what Steve already knew.

‘Why?’

Tony wished he knew. He shrugged. ‘National hero, someone’s got to save you.’


	12. Big Damn Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's side of the story.
> 
> While Steve's been dealing with alternate universes, prison break outs, and the prospect of never going home, Tony's been dealing with SHIELD freaking out, technology failing him, and the possible breakdown of his relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Falls somewhere between Thor 2 and Captain America 2. 
> 
> This fic is set before and therefore uncompliant with Captain America 2. It does borrow though, with Sam Wilson and Bucky both being mentioned. 
> 
> In this fic, Steve did meet Sam while out running but the subsequent adventure through Washington DC to save the world didn't happen. May be seen if this story gets expanded beyond this plot line.

Tony Stark was not having a good day. In fact, today could quite easily get into the top ten worst days of his life, and there was some pretty hefty competition for those places.

  
‘Tony, there’s a Sam Wilson at the door for you,’ said Pepper, standing in the doorway away from all the machinery, circuits and schematics. Her tone wasn’t cold, exactly, but Tony could tell that if he yelled at her one more time, she was going to leave him for good. She looked tired and drained in a way he hadn’t seen in a long time.

  
Apparently Tony Stark wasn’t the only one having a bad day.

  
‘Sam Wilson?’

  
‘Sam Wilson, former paratrooper, Sir,’ said JARVIS, ‘an acquaintance of Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff’s. Since leaving the military, Mr Wilson has worked with military personnel to reacclimatise to civilian life.’ In front of Tony, the screen filled with Wilson’s military record. It was outstanding to say the least.

  
‘Bring him in,’ Tony said.

  
‘Tony -.’

‘Pep, please, bring him in,’ said Tony softly.

  
Pepper nodded once and headed up the stairs. A few seconds later, a tall man with military bearing came down the stairs.

  
‘Mr Stark, I’m Sam Wilson,’ he said, coming to a stop and bracing his hands behind his back. ‘I’m here to help you look for Steve.’

  
‘Tony,’ said the inventor. ‘JARVIS says you know Steve and Natasha.’

  
Sam nodded once. ‘I got to know them pretty well a few months back, they’re good people.’

  
‘You contacted Romanoff?’ Tony asked, looking away from his screens long enough to gage Sam’s response.

  
Sam’s chin went up, his shoulders back, ‘I saw what she could do. We need someone who can help uncover a secret, she seemed like a good place to start.’

  
‘You would be right,’ said Tony, turning back to his screens, satisfied Sam was okay playing outside the sandbox.

  
‘Natasha is scouting out Bucky Barnes; she thought he might be able to help,’ said Sam, stepping up to the console next to Tony. They were about the same height, but Sam hadn’t lost any of his combat weight, making him noticeably bulkier than Tony, who preferred to think of himself as ‘sleek’.

  
‘A psychologically damaged assassin looking for the nation’s hero,’ Tony mused, ‘and Bucky. What could go wrong?’

  
‘Have you made any progress?’ Sam asked.

  
Tony waved a hand at the chaos that was currently his workshop. ‘Steve isn’t on planet earth, that much I know. Which leaves the rest of the universe, and several possible alternate realities.’

  
Sam raised his eyebrows, ‘alternate realities? Are those real?’

  
‘Could be,’ said Tony, ‘Stephen Strange, Wanda Maximoff, Reed Richards, all can access alternate realities if not create them entirely. Stephen Strange and Reed Richards have been accounted for, but Wanda mysteriously disappeared the same day Steve did.’ He pulled up their pictures, throwing Reed’s and Stephen’s to other screens before blowing up Wanda’s picture. Next to it played a grainy video of a women in a leotard and cloak putting flowers on a grave. ‘She was also present at the cemetery the day they disappeared. At the moment she’s our only lead.’

  
‘You think she did something to Steve?’ Sam asked, taking in the picture.

  
‘It’s possible, she’s not the most stable person in the world.’

  
‘This one or an alternate one?’ Sam smirked.

  
Tony grinned, and pointed the stylus at Sam. ‘I like you.’

  
‘So how do we find her?’ Sam asked, turning back to business.

  
‘I don’t know if we can,’ said Tony. ‘I’ve been trying. Power tracking, DNA tracking, I haven’t found anything that brings us to her. It doesn’t look like she’s in this reality and I can’t track any of her spells – damn magic. Richards is scanning for any fluctuations that would suggest inter-dimensional tears, but he’s pure science as well. Magic doesn’t work to the same rules as the machines he’s using.'

That explained the number of holograms around the workshop that were showing images of the earth glowing in several different colours with several different trails. Sam couldn’t follow what it all meant, but there were a lot of numbers and it kind of made his head hurt to look at them. He didn’t know how Stark did it all day long.

‘What about SHIELD?’ Sam asked.

  
‘Can’t find her either,’ said Tony. ‘Banner is helping Richards but they haven’t found anything. Hill pulled Clint from his assignment in Europe to see if Cap was in any of his old haunts from the war.’

  
‘Why would Steve be in Europe?’ Sam asked, frowning at the globe Tony had brought to the fore, with a lot of Europe glowing red, particularly France and Germany, showing everywhere Steve had been during the War. Sam reached out to touch the globe; he didn’t know what he was expecting, but the globe didn’t really feel like anything. The particles moved to the sides as he poked it, then snapped back into place when he pulled away, but seemed to have no substance, just a small electrical charge that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

  
‘SHIELD therapist started talking about psychotic breaks and flashbacks,’ said Tony. ‘Fury thought we should cover all our bases.’

  
From the amounts of screens and holographic images, there were a lot of bases to cover.

  
‘Steve’s never been psychologically unbalanced,’ said Sam, ‘they eval’ed him when he got out the ice, and every few weeks since.’ They’d talked about it a lot when they first met, how they made Steve feel like a rat in a maze, mindlessly performing the same task over and over again for someone’s else agenda.

  
‘Steve’s smart, he got through the tests,’ said Tony, tapping away at his computer, pulling up the footage from Steve’s psychological evaluations.

  
Sam watched the screen as Steve dodged questions and gave the ‘correct’ answers to the suited SHIELD therapists in front of him. Sam had gone through enough psych evals after Riley’s death to recognise a master at work. ‘He’s good.’

  
‘He’s been answering these questions since most of these agents were wandering around in diapers,’ said Tony. ‘He knows how the game works. Say the right thing, don’t end up in a padded cell on thorazine.’

  
‘How is this going to help us find Steve?’ asked Sam.

  
‘It might not,’ said Tony, wandering around his lab, staring at the various screens, tapping a stylus against his chin. ‘But we’ve got to look at everything. Anything could give a clue as to where Steve’s gone.

  
‘I’ve been through every second of what happened in that graveyard. He was next to me, then he was gone. Just gone. There’s nothing to show where he went. The answer has to be in here somewhere.’

  
Sam watched as Tony’s words fell into annoyed mutterings, the inventor moving around the room in a pattern only he could understand. ‘I should call Natasha, see where they’re at with their search.’

  
If Tony heard him, he didn’t give any indication, now flipping through folders on Steve as though they personally offended him with their lack of help.

 

***

 

Nearly a month later they were no better off and Tony was starting to lose it slightly. He couldn’t honestly say why he had to find Steve so bad. Maybe it was to succeed in the one area where Howard had failed, to find Captain America, to be quantifiable better than his father. Maybe he wanted to find the only hero he’d ever had that had lived up to his image, maybe even surpassed it a couple of times.

  
Or maybe it was even that somewhere between New York being invaded and Steve disappearing they had become something resembling friends and Tony didn’t want to lose that; for a person that was constantly surrounded by admirers, Tony had very few friends who would actually go the distance for him, but Steve had, only a few hours after they met when they didn’t even like each other.

  
Most likely it was a combination of all of those things and more, but those were the only ones that Tony was copping to at this point.

  
‘Tony, Nick is here,’ Pepper said softly.

  
Tony took his head off the table where he’d been dozing off. ‘I haven’t got an update.’

  
‘He’s just here to talk,’ Pepper said. ‘I’ll send him down.’

  
She turned to leave. They hadn’t spoken much since Tony had locked himself down in the workshop to help find Steve. Tony knew she spent a lot of time at her own apartment in the past month. He knew the cracks had started widening again.

  
‘Pepper.’

  
She turned, ‘yeah?’

  
Tony didn’t know what to say, so he just said, ‘thanks.’

  
Pepper nodded once, ‘you’re welcome.’

  
Tony waited until she was gone to rub his eyes tiredly. This wasn’t going well.

  
‘Stark.’

  
Tony looked up to see Nick Fury in all his leather glad glory. ‘Do you ever not dress like a boy band?’

  
Fury did not look impressed. ‘Everything okay, Stark?’

  
‘I don’t have any more information for you,’ said Tony tiredly. ‘I’ve been looking, nothing has come up. I’ve tracked everything I can think of tracking, nothing has come back. Steven Rogers is nowhere to be found.’

  
‘I came to see how you’re doing,’ Fury said, in as a gentle tone as he seemed capable of.

  
‘I’m fine, Nick.’

  
‘Is that the same fine you gave when that thing in your chest was killing you? Because that situation didn’t end with you being so fine.’

  
‘Actually, it did – I fixed the arc reactor and rediscovered an element. How is the patent coming on that, by the way?’

  
‘They’re still not going to let you call it badassium.’

  
‘But I filled in the paperwork!’

  
‘I know, Stark, I know.’

  
Fury took a walk through the workshop, turning the holograms to take a better look at all of them. ‘You get all the satellite feeds?’

  
‘Yeah, Hill had your tech guys set up a direct transfer, I can them a few seconds after you do. Got everything up to the nanosecond Steve disappeared. Then nothing. Steve is gone, just gone.’ Tony threw up his hands and pushed away from the desk. ‘Twenty-three days, sixteen hours, thirty-four minutes. That’s how long he’s been gone. That’s how long I’ve been looking.’

  
Fury didn’t say anything, just stood with his hands braced behind his back surveying Tony’s cars. ‘Stark, we may have to face the possibility that Captain Rogers is not coming home.’

  
‘With no respect whatsoever, Nick, that’s not going to happen.’ Tony turned back to his projections.

  
‘Tony, we don’t know where he is, what planet he’s on, if he evens on a planet that exists to us,’ said Fury. ‘We may not have an option in this.’

  
Tony snapped. ‘If you’re not going to help me, Nick, if all you’re going to do is tell me how hopeless all this is, guess what, I already know! I know the numbers! I know there is a less than two per cent chance that we will ever find Steve, and of that two per cent, there is a less than five per cent chance that if we do find Steve we can bring him back from wherever he is. So please, don’t tell me what I know, just – just go, Nick.’ His ire burned itself out and Tony sighed tiredly. ‘Just go.’

  
To his credit, Fury didn’t keep trying to push, he left Tony to keep tapping away at his keyboard. It was futile at this stage, but at least he could try futilely in peace.  
Pepper didn’t come back down again that day. When Tony asked JARVIS where she was, he said she had gone to visit her mother. He tried calling but she didn’t pick up. He couldn’t blame her, it wasn’t easy living with him at the moment. If he could go live with someone else he would.

  
‘JARVIS, what time is it?’

  
‘It’s quarter past four in the afternoon, sir.’

‘How long have I been awake?’

  
‘Fourty-nine hours, sir. Since Captain Rogers’ disappearance you haven’t slept longer than three hours at a time, sir, and never slept more frequently than once every thirty-five hours.’ JARVIS sounded concerned. It was sweet.

  
‘Time to power down, JARVIS,’ said Tony. ‘Back up today’s progress to the servers, what little there is. Wake me in four hours.’

  
‘Should I leave you to wake naturally, sir?’

  
‘God, no,’ said Tony vehemently. ‘Wake me in four hours.’

  
‘Very good, sir.’

  
Tony could tell from his tone JARVIS wasn’t going to wake him in four hours, he wasn’t going to wake him at all. They could fight about that when he’d gotten some sleep.  
Tony stumbled up the slope out of the garage, and somehow made it up the stairs to his room.

  
For a short stay with her mother, Pepper seemed to have cleared out a lot of her stuff.

  
Deciding to deal with that later too, Tony kicked off his shoes, and fell onto the bed.

  
He was asleep before his body hit the mattress.

 

 

Sixteen hours later, Tony peeled his eyes open feeling like hell.

  
‘JARVIS,’ he croaked, ‘what time is it?’

  
There was no response.

  
‘JARVIS.’

  
‘The time is twenty-five minutes past eight,’ said JARVIS sheepishly.

  
Tony grunted, pushing himself to a sitting position, rubbing his eyes. ‘JARVIS, put the coffee machine on, we’ve got twelve hours to make up.’

  
‘Yes, sir,’ said JARVIS. ‘Should I put on any breakfast, sir?’

  
‘Get the diner down the road to deliver a full breakfast and lunch,’ said Tony absently.

  
‘They don’t deliver, sir.’

  
‘Tell them I’ll give the person who delivers fifty dollars,’ said Tony.

 

‘Right away, sir.’

  
Thirty minutes later, Tony was grateful that the diner down the road had an online order system and the busboy was a college kid who needed the extra cash. Dummy followed him around carrying a food laden tray as Tony brought up his holograms, eating French toast as he glared at the glowing 3D images.

  
He stood staring at the satellite feed.

  
Steve was talking.

  
He remembered he and Steve had spoken right before Steve had disappeared. He remembered putting his arm around Steve’s shoulders as the others walked away. But he couldn’t remember what Steve had said.

  
‘JARVIS, is there audio with the satellite feed?’

  
‘No, sir.’

  
‘Can you run a lip reading programme?’

  
‘Of course, sir. Estimated finish time is three minutes.’

  
Three minutes which Tony used to drink enough coffee to keep a small country awake, and inhaled some scrambled eggs and bacon.

  
‘The transcription is complete, sir.’

  
‘Bring it up, JARVIS,’ said Tony, throwing himself down onto his chair and grabbing a ball which he began throwing up and down as JARVIS downloaded the transcript to Tony’s tablet.

  
‘Okay, what do we have here,’ Tony mused, scanning the type.

  
I wish I’d never been born, then I never would have been in that damn war, and never been stuck here.

  
Fuck.

  
‘JARVIS, contact everyone, send them the transcript,’ said Tony, running to his workstation, typing furiously to bring up the transcript on the big screen. ‘Get them over here, now!’

  
‘Sir -.’

 

‘Don’t argue, JARVIS, do it!’

  
‘Sir, Captain Rogers has just appeared in the living room.’

  
‘Eh?’

  
‘Captain Rogers is sitting on the sofa in the living room, sir,’ said JARVIS. ‘According to my scan, it is the real Steve Rogers.’

Tony sprinted out of the workshop into the living room of Stark Tower, stopping to a dead halt when he saw a battered looking Steve Rogers dozing on his sofa.

‘Steve?’ Tony reached out and gripped Steve’s shoulder. He was real, solid and warm and here. Tony let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. ‘Steve?’

  
Steve wasn’t waking up. From sharing a certain amount of living space with him on and off for a while, Tony knew enough of Steve’s waking habits for this to be worrying. ‘Steve, wake up!’ Tony shook him. Steve didn’t wake but his brow did furrow slightly as though he was registering the shake on one level. Tony poked him hard in the cheek. ‘Hey, Spangles, wake up.’

  
He didn’t look happy about it but Steve finally opened his eyes. Tony had never been so relieved to see someone unhappy to see him.

  
‘Morning,’ he said, ‘you okay?’

  
The external sensor tripped, letting him know that whoever JARVIS had managed to contact had arrived.

  
Just to be sure, Tony told JARVIS to run the scan again; the AI sounded petulant given that he had only just run the scan, but never the less did as requested for the benefit of whoever had just arrived, and for Tony’s peace of mind.

  
His peace of mind which made him grab Steve as soon as the guy got on his feet and drag him down to the workshop for a barrage of tests to determine the extent of the damage. Tony had designed a programme to scan for injuries, internal and external, and calculate the amount of time it was going to take to heal; it had been intended for the armed forces but senators had decided it wasn’t cost effect, but thanks to his stint in an Afghani cave and his time in the suit, he’d proven it was more than cost effective for his own purposes.

  
Not to mention that he hated being injured and this at least gave Pepper a time frame of how long she was going to have to put up with him.

  
Pepper. He thought about her for the first time that day. He should have called to make sure she had gotten to her mum’s okay but with everything going on, it had slipped his mind. He made a mental note to call her tonight when everything had been sorted out with Steve. There would be a debriefing, maybe even an investigation as to why an integral member of SHIELD’s active force had been MIA for over three weeks. He’d call her after that, let her know that the situation was sorted out once and for all.

  
Then they could fix their relationship.

  
Tony hid behind the console until he got this thought process back under control. The red on the 3D impression of Steve rapidly gave way to sweeping blue, and Tony’s breathing came easier. Natasha came in just as JARVIS was confirming the time scale until Cap was fighting fit again.

  
For a man that had disappeared for the better part of a month and had apparently led a mass prison breakout, Cap had remarkably few injuries to show for it. Some cuts and a lots of bruises, a swelling on his head where someone had hit with him a blunt object. Considering what they had been up against, that was next to nothing. Some aspirin, maybe a tetanus shot and Steve’s golden. Hell, he didn’t even need a bandage for his most serious wound, just a cold flannel and a lot of sleep.

  
Tony looked down at the arc reactor in his chest.

  
If only every adventure ended so well.

 

***

 

As try as they might, Fury and Natasha could not convince Tony that Steve needed to be moved to a SHIELD compound to recuperate. It was hard when every point they made, Tony countered with a better one, which was, let’s face it, one of the things he did best.

  
Eventually, Natasha just smirked and looked to Fury who had sighed, glared at Tony, and finally agreed that Stark Tower was as safe as any SHIELD compound and markedly more comfortable. Steve was unofficially on official sick leave, until such time as a doctor declared him fit for active service which, if Tony had anything to do with it, would be a week at the earliest, after what he was determined would be the most amazing ‘you missed Christmas so here’s a Christmas/hey look you’re back from whatever wormhole you crawled into and disappeared for nearly a month while the rest of us went damn near crazy trying to find you only for you to turn up in my living room without so much as a by your leave’ party (if there was such a thing).

  
The party was somewhat of a success. Tony definitely did not start (but did win) the ‘my military best friend is better than your military best friend’ with Steve, with Sam Wilson and Rhodey as the best friends (because yeah Sam had some pretty cool wings that Tony couldn’t wait to get his hands on and improve, but Rhodey was War Machine). Thor turned up from London drank everything and got only mildly inebriated, which was fine because Tony wasn’t drinking anymore. The SHIELD members of the team managed to drag Bruce Banner up from the bottom floor of the R&D department to sing Christmas carols. Fury and Hill got caught under mistletoe and threatened anyone who told them to kiss with instant termination – of their jobs or their lives, Tony couldn’t tell. Coulson herded his new little ducklings in around midnight where they promptly devoured everything edible on four floors.

  
Even Pepper showed up for a couple hours, though whether that was because he asked her to, or because she was breaking up with him he didn’t know. They ended up in their – his – bedroom anyway.

  
It was probably the first time since middle school Tony had had someone in his bedroom and they really had just talked.

  
‘Tony,’ she began.

  
And suddenly, Tony found he didn’t need to hear it. Or he didn’t want to. Either way, what she was about to say was unnecessary.

  
‘It’s okay, Pep,’ he said gently, squeezing her hand. ‘It’s okay.’

  
‘Really?’ Pepper squeezed her eyes shut as tears welled up. Her mascara didn’t smudge, probably because it was waterproof, but Tony liked to think because the makeup didn’t have the guts to make Pepper look untidy.

  
Tony nodded, and just like that, like they always used to, they both got it.

  
‘You know, Happy has always had a thing for you,’ Tony said, plastering a big grin on his face.

  
‘Yeah?’ Pepper said, giving him her own smile. Hers wavered a bit, but she hadn’t been faking it a long as he had.

  
‘I think you two would be good together.’

  
‘Happy’s a good guy.’

  
‘The best,’ said Tony. ‘You deserve the best.’

  
Tears gathered in Pepper’s eyes. ‘Tony -.’ She stopped, still not sure of what to say.

  
Tony stood and rebuttoned his suit jacket. ‘Is that all, Ms Potts?’

  
Pepper stood, straightened his collar, and laid her hand over the arc reactor. ‘That’s all, Mr Stark.’

  
‘Then if you’ll excuse, there’s a party downstairs that just isn’t the same without me.’

  
Tony gave her one last smile, then turned his back and walked to the door. Once he was safely in the deserted corridor, he let the mask slip, leaning against the wall as he wondered what it was he could have done better, or if he had just never been enough for her.

 

The party didn’t seem so appealing now, so Tony headed out to the balcony, which he had given JARVIS orders to keep off limits (got to love automatically locking doors and force fields) given the amount of drinking happening in the tower. It was cold out there in that January night, and blessedly quiet. Muted music and the noise of happy partygoers reverberated through the glass walls; it wasn’t enough to bother him, just enough to remind him there were other people around.

  
He should have brought a coat out here, it was bloody freezing. He sat on the bench and started to think about what sort of heater would be most effective out here when the doors slid open and Steve came out onto the balcony.

  
So much for the solitude.

  
Steve saw him and hesitated as though he was weighing up what would be more rude, not going over there now that they had seen each other, or disturbing Tony’s privacy. Evidently he decided that the former was worse because he came over to ask why Tony wasn’t inside enjoying the party. Oddly, Tony found himself telling Steve the truth, and then Steve was sat next to him still calling him Mr. Stark.

  
‘They told me you did a lot to get me back while I was gone.’

  
Tony wasn’t about to admit how much of an understatement that was. He made some sort of blithe comment that he couldn’t remember two seconds later. Then some of the truth came out, which Tony hated because it made him sound pretty desperate.

  
He shouldn’t have come out here. He blinked tiredly. Pepper was gone and it hurt. He should have just stayed in his room with a bottle of scotch.  
Then Steve asked him why. Why had he asked for the job. Why had he put so much effort into finding Steve. Why did it matter to Tony so much if Steve came back or not.  
He didn’t know which ‘why’ Steve was asking but the answer was the same.

  
‘National hero, someone’s got to save you.’

  
‘Well, I’m grateful it was you, Mr – Tony,’ said Steve.

  
His smile was warm and friendly, and reminded Tony of how Pepper used to smile at him before he ruined everything by being her boyfriend, like he might actually be someone worth being around.

  
‘Of course you are,’ said Tony, ‘I’m a genius superhero.’

  
Steve looked at him like Tony wasn’t fooling him anymore, which was all kinds of scary and yet he wasn’t scared. Because Steve was still looking at him like he wasn’t disappointed by what he saw. He saw Tony, and Tony was enough.

  
Maybe he should have JARVIS scan Steve again for brain damage…

  
Maybe he should have JARVIS scan Tony for brain damage…

  
‘It’s nice being back,’ said Steve, looking out over the city.

  
‘What was that place like?’ Tony asked.

  
‘It was – Hell. You weren’t there, and it was Hell.’

  
‘I wasn’t there?’ Tony didn’t like the sound of that. ‘Where was I?’

  
‘You – you were in the car instead of Howard,’ said Steve, looking at Tony then quickly down at his feet.

  
‘Oh.’

  
Well that sucked.

  
‘You weren’t there, SHIELD was – SHIELD was bad. Anyone will powers was rounded up and imprisoned. A lot of us were dead.’

  
‘Because you wished you had never been born?’ Tony whistled. ‘You made more of a difference than you thought.’

  
‘It wasn’t just me, Tony, it was everyone,’ said Steve, turning those serious blue eyes on him. ‘The soldier selected in my place went crazy. SHIELD was founded on the principle that things like that should never happen again. They tried to keep Howard in line by killing you and Maria. Anyone who displayed any kind of above normal abilities was hunted down or went on the run.  
‘I miss my world, Tony, I miss what I knew. But it wasn’t the forties I was missing when I was in that place, it was here. Don’t get me wrong, this place still confuses me sometimes. It’s not perfect. But it’s home and I missed it. I missed our team. I missed this place. I missed you.’

Tony didn’t know what to say that to that. If it was anyone else, he’d try to flirt. If it was three years ago, he’d try to flirt. But not only was this Steve, Tony had just broken up with Pepper and everything felt too much and too close right now. He was relieved Steve was back, and he was glad nothing worse than a bump on the head and some unexpected time in another dimension had happened to him, but three weeks of no sleep and too much worry was finally catching up with him, and he was realising that Steve was a friend, like a real one and maybe more than that but whoa that was for another time because even his enormous really awesome brain could not handle much more stimulus and he was going to say the wrong thing and mess it up and Steve was never going to talk to him again and it was all going to go really, really badly.

‘I missed you too.’

And just like that, it wasn’t the wrong thing to say.

They shared a small smile, and went back to looking out over the city until it got too cold to sit outside without losing extremities anymore. When they got inside they found that the party had wound down to almost a stand still. Most people had moved to the bedrooms leaving only a few in front of the television. Steve and Tony sat on the sofa where Clint and Natasha were bickering over what to watch; Natasha wanted to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show while Clint wanted to watch America’s Next Top Model. Tony vetoed the both of them and put on an old black and white movie called It’s a Wonderful Life.

Steve had never seen it before, the film having been released after his plane had gone down, but as the film wore on, Steve found he could sympathise with George Bailey, particularly when he was running over a bridge in a snowstorm begging Clarence to send him home. Some people ran around during inclement weather, other people broke three hundred superpowered individuals out of a maximum security prison.

‘Hey, Steve?’ Tony said, his quiet voice breaking the comfortable silence they had been sitting in. By the time the end credits were rolling, everyone around them was asleep, glasses of eggnog and pieces of fruitcake strewn around the room. Tony was squished in between Cap and Sam, who was snoring softly as Marvin Gaye sang I Want to Come Home for Christmas in the background because someone hadn’t turned off the sound system.

  
‘Yes?’ Steve asked, looking down at Tony.

  
‘Don’t go away again, okay?’ Tony smiled.

  
‘Okay,’ Steve agreed, smiling back.

  
They looked away, enjoying the quiet for a few more minutes until Tony said again, ‘hey, Steve?’

  
‘Yes?’

  
‘Merry fake Christmas.’

  
‘Merry fake Christmas, Tony.’


End file.
